LIVING

“Our survey shows that there is a strong impression amongst employers that they do not have to give expectant mothers the support they are legally entitled to in order for them to return to their jobs,” said Monster.es marketing manager Covadonga Soto. “For this reason, many women are finding it impossible to reconcile familial and employment responsibilities.”

These findings are not anomalous. Only seven percent of Spanish companies are ‘family responsible’, according to research by the IESE Business School. Meanwhile, a separate report published earlier this year by the Madrina Foundation claimed that pregnancy is the main reason why a quarter of women between the ages of 18 and 25 lose their jobs. The figure jumps to 50 percent when women ask to work fewer hours after returning from maternity leave or for time off to care for a sick child. Ninety percent of those surveyed said they had been hassled by their employers because of pregnancy, a form of intimidation that has been termed ‘maternal mobbing’.

“Unfortunately, in modern industrial society, pregnancy is viewed as bad news, almost as an illness,” said Conrado Giménez, President of the Madrina Foundation.

“The problem is becoming particularly bad in Latin societies such as Spain because they are gradually adopting a Calvinistic Anglo-Saxon capitalist economic model, when traditionally they have been Catholic and family-supported societies. However, Spain does not have the social welfare system that women in Anglo-Saxon countries enjoy and since employers are not prepared to support this ‘economic burden’, maternal mobbing is becoming increasingly common.”

In Barcelona, the issue was the subject of a special conference earlier this year entitled ‘Maternal Mobbing—Scourge of the New Century’, and was organised by the Grup d’Entitats Catalanes de la Familia (GEC). The conference highlighted a joint report between the IESE Business School and Adecco employment agency, which found that one in five women in prominent leadership positions had either been offered money to leave or resigned from their jobs due to irreconcilable family and employment responsibilities.

“There are companies who simply prefer to hire women over 40 years old or pay the penalty for dismissing a pregnant one rather than supporting or keeping the post open for them,” according to the report’s director Núria Chinchilla. “This mentality, which is deeply rooted in Spanish culture, continues to be one of the main reasons why companies prefer to hire men. Spain is losing a huge amount of professional female talent because of this.”