Mothers and workers, the juggling of conciliation
The woman came to the labor market to stay and today, the vast majority of mothers combine their role in raising children with a professional performance. The debate on labor conciliation remains open on several fronts and, in the meantime, each mother tries to adapt to the conditions that are imposed in life to deal with all the best that she can. Here there are no miraculous recipes. In each house the ingredients are adapted so that the important thing is always "thisfamilywelove".
What do women ask for in the labor market?
Why do they work? Would they work if they did not need the money? Does working outside the home perform to mothers? Have families understood the changes in traditional roles? From the generation of our grandmothers to ours there has been a substantial change in the way of understanding the role of women both inside and outside the home. But as in all social changes, there is still a long way to go until the balance between work and motherhood is perfect.
One of the undeniable pitfalls that women encounter his professional development is that of the so-called glass ceiling. The problem does not lie in whether women have access to management positions or not. This view, often distorted by ideology, is obvious if women really want to gain access to management positions to end up creating quotas that can even harm the image of the women who manage to reach their efforts, and not with positive discrimination.
The Gordian knot is, for Professor Cristina Noriega, Family Therapist at the Family Institute of the CEU San Pablo University, if the business gear still "punishes" those women who decide to put a reasonable limit on their work to be able to reconcile with maternity. For this expert, in that punishment, which is specifically framed in the difficulties to promote, lies the decision of many women to postpone and limit their motherhood. That is to say, motherhood ends up being seen as a limit to professional development, as a choice against labor growth, instead of being understood as complementary and enriching elements.
Work with a greater degree of conciliation
From a sociological point of view, broadly speaking there are women who work for personal growth and who may find that, once they reach high positions, they find it very difficult to renounce further promotions in order to conciliate; while other women work out of necessity, because they lack money, or because they prefer a job to stay at home. At the midpoint, explains Noriega, there would be the balance maintained by these women who are clear that they want to work and at the same time They look for jobs that allow them a greater degree of conciliation.
Although society is opening the necessary spaces for the incorporation of women into the labor market, much remains to be done to a true conciliation and a full acceptance of the change of roles what is happening In fact, the difficulties faced by women are even more pronounced in Spain compared to other neighboring countries because work schedules make it less feasible for conciliation to be a matter for both women and men.
Since many jobs are not compatible with family life, one member of the family is forced to limit his work to take care of the offspring. In the current configuration of society and with a patent salary gap between men and women, it is still the mother who stops her professional career to a greater extent.
The life cycle of women: motherhood
In this same sense, it happens that the life cycle of women ends up marked not so much by the family but by their leaders. The decision on motherhood is not based on a present economic component, but on the labor repercussions and the consequences derived from announcing a new pregnancy or a new maternity leave.
If at work you need a change of attitude towards motherhood, also in the home it is necessary that all its members understand the burdens of a working woman. The idea of the mother who can with everything has to be replaced by that of a mother who, as she works, needs and expects the collaboration of all. Only when the woman and her environment understand that there are such limits, will they be able to fully live the balance between domestic work and work outside the home.
That Balance requires not only valuing work outside the home, but also valuing the household. Because one of the problems that we are still experiencing with the rapid transformation of society after the incorporation of women into the labor market is that we have gone from one extreme - the idea that the working mother was giving up functions - to the contrary - the idea that the mother who wants to take care of her own is not realized as a person. The problem is that "social movements tend to go from one extreme to the other," says Noriega.
Meanwhile, there are no miraculous recipes."The true conciliation is to adjust the work circumstances according to each family", concludes this expert from the Family Institute of the CEU San Pablo University.
María Solano Altaba. CEU professor and director of the magazine Thisfamilywelove
