Feminist Initiative

Transferable personal rights?

It is very interesting that transferable parental leave constitutes a single exception in the legal system concerning social security and labour legislation. Normally, people contribute to the social security system on the basis of their personal work situation. They gain rights derived from those contributions, which also work on a personal basis. Employers have to respect employee’s personal rights, not the ones related to their relatives or other grown-ups related to them. The legal relationships generated in the working place between employer and employee are entirely personal.

It means that people have their own holidays, their own right to sick permit, their wages…they cannot transfer to other people. But this rule gets broken when it comes to parental leave. Then men can transfer women the ‘right to stay at home’. What are the predictable consequences of this? Why do employers have to adjust their working relationships according to the employee’s sex? Why do they have to know whether the female employee’s partner is willing to stay at home with children or he prefers to transfer his parental leave right to her? How is it possible that people can transfer their rights so easily?

I can imagine a couple deciding over their holidays:

Hey, boss, I will take this year a month and a half. My wife transfers me half her holidays.

How does it sound?

You can tell me that going on holidays is not as important as taking care of children. Well, holidays are very important, that is why you cannot renounce or transfer them to anybody else. Of course, taking care of children is the most important responsibility. That’s why fathers should not be able to renounce it, so that no employer or no other person can take it away from them. And social services, educational, day care centers, so hardly gained, should remain intact, so that grown-ups can decide in freedom if they want to work. Because, I think, it is very difficult to decide, with any kind of freedom, whether to go to work or not, if you are holding a baby in your arms, isn’t it?

Why do we always have to discuss the same obvious rationale?

The conclusion is as usual as ever: nothing is gained forever. Social conquest should be kept alive every day, every minute. In Sweden it is also difficult to move forward. And here it is also possible to go backwards.

María

Free choice for families??

The political campaign here is a bit strange. While F! denounces inequalities and proposes measures, the Socialdemocratic party, now in power with the collaboration of the Left and the Green parties, keeps surprisingly silent. They prefer not to talk about equality.

The alliance of the parties on the right wing is talking about measures to increase the ‘free choice’ of families. Just four days ago they suggested a a money payment for people who choose not to use day care centers. Christian democratic and Moderate parties also pretend to eliminate the non-transferable parental leave in order to go back to the ‘free choice’ as before 1995. This is the issue: ‘free choice of families’.

Why are they so worried about that? It reminds me of the old idea that domestic violence and rape within marriage were ‘private issues.’ You did not have free choice then to get divorce or to have an abortion. Women could do nothing without husband’s permission. They could not even go away. Feminists shouted that ‘personal is public.’ Right to divorce and equality in the civil code were achieved. Women got right to protection against their husband’s violence. They could use birth control pills and have an abortion, although in very restricted circumstances. And they said that we were already ‘equal in the eyes of the law.’

So, now, they say "families are the ones making decisions in harmony". Empirical research shows that harmony is the exception, not the general rule. Power is primarily in men’s hands, but all this does not seem to matter much. The important fact, instead, is that the legend goes that women determine the choice. Women do most of the housework because they love it. Women prefer to work part-time because they love children. They take most of the parental leaves because they love to be at home.

So, what is what sociology has to say? If women like all that, since they are doing it, why are feminists jumping in with all their absurd theories?

The question that comes to my mind is, why men don’t? Don’t they like it? I cannot see them trying to get a part-time job, staying at home with children when they are sick. What happens? Are they more generous to sacrifice in favor of women?

It sounds to me as a very weird joint decision where women always do what is good for the family and men what is good for themselves. And you can also see that in the political movement. If they sacrifice so much, I wonder why there is no political movement in favor of parental leave for men, to satisfy their desire to stay at home and see their children grow.

The truth is that only women are the ones fighting for individualization of parental leave, non-transferable parental leaves, why?

Parental leave in Sweden: why is it so difficult that fathers take care of their children? (II)

This debate F! raises about individualization of parental leaves is not new.

It is a long time since Sweden decided in favour to conceive of people as individuals, and not as part of family units. Since family freedom to choose is not the same when you talk about male family members or female family members, and it does not have the same effects for everybody, Sweden decided to eliminate the joint income tax statement in 1971. It was optional before that reform, as in Spain.

They made this decision after a hot debate similar to the one happening now: the debate about the terrible consequences that family benefits and the "assumed" freedom to choose have for women.

The novelty now is that there is a critical mass of Swedish women demanding to go completely into the parental leave individualization. There are men asking for that, as well, but less than women.

The government created in April 2004 a working group to analyze this issue. In October 2005, this group presented their conclusions. They propose to set up a 15-month parental leave where 5 of them would be non-transferable for the mother, other 5 non-transferable months for the father, and the other 5 months could be divided between the mother and the father as they decide. It follows the Icelandic model.

In the Socialdemocrat party, this proposal is supported by the women league and the youth association. But it was not accepted in the last congress. The Green party and some trade unions are also in favour of it. The Left party goes even further when they agree with F! in that it is needed to grant a non-transferable parental leave of 50% of the time for each one of the parents (mother or father).

Nobody denies that this is an important step to reach equality, but once again there are unspoken resistances to ignore this issue. In the short run, whatever happens will depend on the political scenario coming up from the 17/11 elections. But now they all know what the way to equality is like.

If F! gets into Parliament this time, at least we could make sure that this issue will not be forgotten once again.

Maria

Parental leave in Sweden: why is it so difficult that fathers take care of their children? (I)

In Sweden it is constantly said that everybody has to work in the labour market and that men have to share housework and children care.

Boys learn at school how to sew and girls how to carve wood. However, time use differences persist. Although Swedish men participate more than others, it is women the ones that make most of the housework, and problems grow when they have children. Then, it is women again the ones who stay longer at home and the ones who choose jobs compatibles with those chores (and also badly paid).

Is this a private problem where the public sector has nothing to say? Not at all: experience shows which ones are the necessary reforms to reach equality.

One of the important proposals of Feminist Initiative (F!) is the complete individualization of the parental leave. This issue is in the centre of the debate, although many people here would rather forget about it. But, what is the problem with parental leaves in Sweden? History can give light on all the difficulties and stumbling upon on the way to share children's care. 

Sweden eliminated differences between mothers and fathers regarding parental leave in 1974. However, instead of creating an individual leave for each person, it was created on a family basis, so that it could be shared and divided between father and mother at convenience. That year, the generous Swedish fathers took 0% of the total parental leave hours (100% for mothers), and the proportion did not change much more in the next two decades.

In light of this result, in 1994, a non-transferable month for each parent was implemented. This measure was very successful: in 1995, fathers took 10% of the total parental leave time (in hours).

In 2002 the non-transferable parental leave was increased up to 2 months. And in 2003, fathers enjoyed 17% of the total amount of hours taken under parental leave time. It is an enormous amount of time, the time fathers devote to taking care of their children in Sweden, in comparison to any other European country, except Iceland.

During these years, the total amount of parental leave has been increasing. Nowadays it makes up to 390 days at 80% of the salary, plus 90 days more at 7€/day.

Women (mothers) tend to sistematically take all the time men (fathers) do not. At least, most of the 390 days at 80% of the salary. Which means that women are out of work for a minimun of 324 days, while fathers are under parental leave for 66 days on average.

Also women tend to take the parental leave from the moment of the child birth, while men tend to take it over a more extended time span (by law it is allowed to take it up to when the child is 8 years old).

One of the main effects of this behaviour pattern is the vertical seggregation of the labour market. As Anna Toursie--economist in the Landsorganizationen (Swedish Trade Union Confederation) and author of a report about this issue--, says "employers do not want people who take longer parental leaves, so, since men take shorter ones, they are chosen for responsibility positions."

Some people say that women monopolize parental leaves and do not allow men to take them. Others say tyhat it is important to keep families free to choose. Gudrun Schyman responds: "It is very easy to say that you can have your own choice and the feminists should decide by themselves. And that means that they are not aware of that the decision making that is going on today is in the framework of the patriarchal system. And that there are very strong signals from the very beginning. You are a bad mother if you don’t take care of your children all the time. As a father, as a man, you are like a woman, if you are too much with the children. So these gender roles make it very difficult for people to make genuine decisions from their heart, because you are tuned into these gender roles from the very beginning of your life and it will follow you until you die."

María

Test on feminism for fathers

Feminist Initiative (F!) stands on the idea that gender equality issues are not ´women issues´ but issues that concern the whole society. F! talk to men about their individual and collective responsibility; and calls them to take part against the patriarchy, in their private lives and with political action. As an example, here it is one of the campaign materials: a test on feminism for fathers!

           Daddy, are you feminist?

Tests this checklist:

• I take half of the parental leave
• I gladly share both salary and household work
• drive my children to and take them from the kindergarten as much as my partner
• I tell children that it is normal to fell in love with someone of your own sex
• I encourage my daughter to be assertive and my son to show feelings
• am equally into washing machine's programmes than into household repairs
• I don’t want to be always the one who drives the car while my partner is sitting at the side
• I do not laugh with insulting jokes about women but show my dislike for them
• I try to make my children feel that they are in complete safety and security
• I know my children's sizes and remembers their friends’ birthdays
• For me, making an oven pancake is as easy as drinking a glass of water
• I respect always a woman's decisions about having an abortion or not
• I will never depart from my 100% assumed parenthood!
• I realize that men as group have more power in society than women as a group, I try to do something to change this situation
• I want to become member of Feminist Iinitiative and will send 200 Kr to the postal account 40 57 53-5.