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CHILE: Maternity Leave – Longer, or for All Working Mothers?

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Jun 14 2010 (IPS) - “In Chile, women carry the entire burden of maternity,” says teacher Fabiola Quiñones, who applauds the government’s proposal to extend pre- and post- natal leave to six months — but only if all new mothers who work can have that option.

When her son was just four months old, Quiñones was fired from her job after completing the 12-week paid maternity leave.

Until then, the 29-year-old primary school teacher did not know that her temporary contract left her unprotected. Women with ongoing contracts have one-year job protection if they take maternity leave.

The stress left her unable to breast-feed Vicente, now six months old, who now has to be fed with costly infant formula.

“My employer wasn’t interested in taking responsibility for all the benefits to which I had the right as a new mother. They sued me and the labour tribunal took away the right (to job protection),” Quiñones told IPS. When she looked for a new job teaching in private schools, she was ruled out precisely because she is a new mother.

On Apr. 29, Chile’s conservative President Sebastián Piñera created the Women, Work and Maternity Commission, made up of 14 experts (men and women), with the mandate to present recommendations to update labour and maternity policy by Jul. 11.

Piñera, a multimillionaire businessman who began his presidential term Mar. 11, promised to make maternity leave longer and more flexible, considering the benefits to child development of parent-child bonding and breast- feeding. He also pledged to remove the obstacles that continue to prevent women from entering the workforce.

Chile’s fertility rate is just 1.9 children per woman, which is not enough for population replacement in this country of 17 million people. Despite advances in recent decades, the employment rate among women stands at about 50 percent.

The government pays for maternity, currently set at 18 weeks: six prior to birth and 12 weeks after.

“The post-natal leave is not a right for all women. Not even all working women. It’s only for those who have an indefinite work contract. That is slightly less than 50 percent of employed women,” Teresa Valdés, coordinator of the non-governmental Observatory for Gender and Equality, told IPS.

“Instead of debating whether to extend the leave to six months or not, the women’s movement is concerned about ensuring that all working mothers have access to leave,” she said.

Silvia Aguilar, national vice-president of the country’s largest labour union, CUT, said “the six-month post-natal leave would be a big help for the children and the family,” but she warned against being distracted from the deeper problem.

Many working women, like those with seasonal farm jobs, cannot care for their newborns and be ensured of an income, Aguilar said. And women who are self-employed could only have access to maternity leave if they have kept up on their contributions to the social security system.

Employers, meanwhile, complain of the numerous “costs” associated with hiring women of childbearing age.

The examples they cite include not being able to fire women during maternity leave, the need to hire replacements when women “abuse” medical leaves to care for ill infants, and the loss of productivity for the one hour daily the women are given to feed their children under two years.

Some Commission experts say that extending post-natal leave would reduce some of those costs, but there are women’s groups that fear it would end up preventing women from being hired in the first place and from being promoted — unless reforms are established that are based on “shared responsibility.”

So far, President Piñera has supported reforming the law that requires employers to finance nursery facilities if there are more than 20 women on the payroll, to a different system in which this “burden” is shared with working fathers.

Since 2005, Chilean fathers have the right to five days of paid leave after the birth of a child. But other countries, especially in Europe, have enacted more advanced formulas for shared parental leave.

The minutes of the Commission’s sessions reveal just how complex this issue is.

For example, Francisca Dussaillant, public policy researcher at the private University of Development, proposed that an extension of post-natal leave should be required for low-income working women and voluntary for those with higher salaries — an idea shot down as discriminatory by another member of the commission.

Nor is it clear how an extension of this benefit would be financed.

Furthermore, to increase women’s participation in the workforce requires other public policies and cultural changes, say the experts. For example, an expansion of childcare services in general, as well as care for other dependents, such as the elderly and chronically ill, given that the responsibility falls mostly to women and is unpaid.

In the home, a more equitable distribution of household chores between men and women would also be needed.

Convention 183 on Maternity Protection, of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which entered into force in 2002 and has so far been ratified by 18 countries, establishes a minimum of 14 weeks of maternity leave, paid for by social security or public funds.

But the ILO recommendation is that leave should be 18 weeks or more, which in Latin America can only be found in Chile, Cuba and Venezuela, while Brazil and Costa Rica offer 16 weeks.