It is nothing new that Spain does not trust work and family reconciliation, and a new touch of attention has come to us since the OECD, which notes that Spain needs to improve its conciliation policies.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is an international cooperation organization, composed of 34 states, whose objective is to coordinate their economic and social policies to improve the living conditions of the countries.
In a recent statement, he states that Spain needs to strengthen its policies to reconcile work with the family and analyzes the situation in the country, referring to social investments, the role of grandparents in the care of grandchildren and many interesting facts. We comment frequently on the blog.
As they point out, the fact that families in Spain find it difficult to reconcile work with family life entails that female employment rates and fertility rates are low compared to international levels.
Regarding the low birth rates, several factors are pointed out:
With only 1.4 children per woman, the overall fertility rate in Spain has been among the lowest in the OECD during the last two decades. Increasingly, women and men first want to establish themselves in the labor market before having children. This has led to a postponement of maternity and the average age of first child for the mother is now close to 30. Low fertility rates are also related to a drop in the number of large families and an increase in the proportion of women They have no children.
With respect to female employment, although it has increased markedly in Spain in recent years (from 32.5% in 1995 to 53.5% in 2009) it is still below the OECD average (59.6%); 75% of mothers return to work only 8 years after delivery.
Public spending on family benefits also receives a "rapa dust" from the OECD, since with 1.6% of GDP in 2007 it continues below the OECD average of 2.2%. Social spending per child is also below the average of the organization.
We know from the report that in 2008, 66.9% of children under 6 years of age enrolled in formal care services, that is, schooling (in this case the OECD average is 58.2%).
However, care outside school hours is limited and many working parents depend on informal care: approximately one quarter of the grandparents in Spain take care of their grandchildren daily. Some of them may develop the "slave grandfather syndrome".
Finally, reference is made to another issue that interests us, gender inequalities in the home:
In Spain, women spend more time on unpaid work (about 5 hours a day, on average) than men (less than 2 hours a day, on average): the sixth largest gender gap in the OECD. A more equitable division of unpaid work within Spanish households could contribute to a greater participation of fathers and mothers in the labor market, to better provide the income that families need and to have the number of children at the desired time.
As we can see, it is a rather bleak picture on which one has to work to overcome, giving importance to improvements in work and family reconciliation policies on the part of the whole society and put ourselves at the level of other countries that surpass us in this and enter into the "paradises" for motherhood.
