The conciliation: the glass ceiling of the woman
"If you are not interested in working conditions, do not worry, I have the drawer full of resumes of people who want your position." With this and other similar expressions the labor demands frequently ended. And so, many people have had to give up or their family life, or their professional development. And, the Spanish schedules continue to be the worst nightmare.
Spain is, together with Lithuania, the country of the EU that worse conciliates personal and professional life. The policies of flexibility and reconciliation of work and family life should not be considered as a model aimed exclusively at improving the integration of women in the labor market, because today, flexibility is much more. It is a way of understanding the employee-company relationship beyond the sex of the worker.
Flexibility at work is a cultural change that arises from the need of companies to have the best and obtain their maximum performance and the desire of the workers to give their best in the company, without ceasing to be people.
Reconciliation is everyone's business
Precisely, based on this premise and her personal experience, Laura Baena, founder of the Club de Malasmadres, explains that "I know what it is to get around the obstacles that the road is putting and I stumble upon them. become a mother with a lapidary phrase "we are not a company for moms and babies", what I did not imagine is what was to come, after jumping and trying to avoid the obstacles of not being able to reconcile, of not being able to see The good girl and to feel guilty for everything I fell in. The resignation came from the hand and, ironies of life, became the opportunity to create the Club of Malasmadres and fight for the conciliation that I never had ".
Hours 9 to 5
However, the price paid by women to stay on the market with equal opportunities has been succumbed to a business culture designed by and for men. The term superwoman brings together women who have assumed professional responsibilities and have also managed to maintain family members. All this has generated stress, low birth rates, and an index of marital failures of the highest in Europe.
Any individual can be a good professional without having to give up their family and personal ambitions. Today there are many voices that rise to rationalize Spanish schedules with Europeans. In recent years, one of the most visible voices is that of Laura Baena, who from the Home of the Malasmadres Club, defines what real conciliation is by saying that it means "not to give up our professional career or to see our children grow , a utopian goal because in our country, 6 out of 10 women renounce their professional career as mothers, and motherhood is the real glass roof of women today. "
Measures and solutions to conciliate
Currently, in the companies there are two measures for conciliation that are the reduction of working hours and leave. Laura Baena believes that "these measures to conciliate are not solutions, they serve in the medium and short term so that mothers do not have to give up their family life, but we need other solutions like the ones we presented in change.org of tax incentives for SMEs that implement continuous days with flexible hours. It is also important that the man, from the first moment that he is going to be a father, have that shared responsibility and for that it is necessary that there exist equal permission of paternity and maternity because having a baby is a responsibility of two and it is a social responsibility ".
Marisol Nuevo Espín
