After the birth of their first daughter, Laura Baena, founder of Club Malasmadres, thought that quitting work to focus on her motherhood was a decision that he made freely. Today, ten years later, she knows that this is not the case, and that motherhood continues to be “the great glass ceiling for women”.
“We have been deceived. The message that you will get where you want, and you will be what you want to be is a mirage that we have believed until the maternity, which is the great glass ceiling that makes us have to choose”, reflects Baena in an interview with Efe on the occasion of the presentation of the book ‘I do not resign’, published by Lunwerg.
A choice, the one that millions of women make between work and motherhood, which is not free. “I tried. I spent two years trying to reconcile within the company and I realized that I couldn’t have hellish schedules and at the same time be present as a mother if I didn’t delegate that care”. And there she began her story of resignation and at the same time her fight so that no woman would have to give up again when she is a mother.
A complicated struggle in Spain, one of the European countries with the longest working hours, and where the women who they manage to “bad reconcile” they do it based on reductions in working hours, leave of absence and accepting “outrageous” work situations.
“Why do I have to charge less for doing a job that is a social good such as having children, with a reduction in working hours or a leave of absence?” he asks.
But the truth – he regrets – is that women have to accept to “stop” their career and give up their professional aspirations in his thirties because the labor system “only prioritizes productivity.”
To change this reality Baena believes that governments and companies must be made to understand that “this is not about patches”, rather, a profound change in the labor and social model is necessary, from the structures to the labor relations “which have been sustained generation after generation in a masculine hegemony that falls on its own weight because if there are no mothers and no children, there are no future”.
It recognizes the difficulties, since until now the conciliation and the care has been free for the State and this has been revealed during the pandemic, when the mothers “have taken the situation forward” with the schools closed and working and without any help.
But it urges “break the silence once and for all” and unite the strength of all women. “And stop being silent so that we are not judged as bad mothers, for fear that they will give us the ‘M’ for mothers in our companies and be the next to receive the dismissal letter or suffer situations of discrimination and maternal mobbing. that we see every day.”
This advertising creative and communicator is convinced that this generation is going to be the generator of change. “We are the bridge generation that we are going to leave the fundamental pieces in place so that our daughters see it and can make it a reality”.
But, he warns, timing is critical. “We cannot keep quiet because they deceived us, they told us that we could go out into the labor market, but it turns out that men have not entered the home in the same way.”
And he asks them to “leave your privileges aside” and team up with women because they are also part of this change.
And even though you think conciliation today is “a tall tale”, he refuses to consider it a utopia, because that would imply assuming that it has no solution and that it does. “We must put all the social agents to work with the same focus, which is to recognize motherhood socially and economically and, from there, begin to put in place the structures that change this social reality and stop the resignation of women when it comes maternity”.
Related news
Evaluate measures such as Co-Responsible Plan, but criticizes its low funding, which means that it reaches very few families and asks not to divert the focus to issues such as the appropriateness or not of continuous sessions in schools.
“Let’s not link the conciliation of mothers with the hours that children spend in schools. Conciliating is not lengthening school hours, but changing the work model and understand the social good that mothers give to this society without a future“, he defends.