The Prague Post Online: News: Losing out

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July 25th, 2008

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Losing out

Women with children are left behind by new public finance reforms

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 16th, 2008 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST

Blanka Vlková is one of many Czech mothers preparing to return to the work force. enlarge

After having children, Blanka Vlková took three years off from her job as a director’s assistant for a mobile telephone company. Now she’s worried about re-entering the work force, making time for her children and meeting her office obligations.

“What upsets me is the situation when I will go back to work,” she says. “The employer has to employ me, but I don’t know what the future will be like.”

Because of the new government finance reforms, that future looks a bit harder for women, according to an analysis released Jan. 3 by Open Society and ProEquality, two nongovernmental organizations. Allowances for children have been reduced and the birth allowance lowered. Furthermore, funding to fields that mostly employ women, such as education and health care, have been cut while those wherein the work force is composed largely of men, like construction and transportation, are due to receive a cash infusion.

“Women prevail in most of the groups that will be harshly affected by the reform [seniors, disabled, child caretakers, etc.] and, contrary to this, men prevail in groups that will benefit from the reforms,” ProEquality states in a press release. “So, in general, the reform increases the inequality between men and women.”

But Jiří Sezemský, spokesman of the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, dismisses ProEquality’s analysis.

“Our ministry rejects all conclusions suggested by this analysis,” he says. “It is not true at all that the reforms in general have a harder impact on women. We have no calculations like those available.”

In fact, says Petr Pavlík, who works for Open Society and is on the faculty of Charles University’s gender studies department, the government has failed to produce any report on how the reforms will affect women differently, even though such a review is required by law.

Benefit reductions

Pavlík says the new reforms spring from a conservative social ideology held by the Civic Democrats that effectively supports the traditional family model by keeping women poorer and making their transitions back into the workplace rougher.

For example, the reforms do not support nursery schools and kindergartens, which would lend flexibility to a working woman’s schedule, Irena Smetáčková of Open Society told the Czech News Agency (ČTK). This lack of support is especially hard on single parents, 90 percent of whom are women, ProEquality reports, adding that 70 percent of all single parents are in danger of poverty.

Unemployment rates support such concerns. Among people younger than 35 — the prime ages for starting a family — about 8.8 percent of women are unemployed compared with 5.8 percent of men, the ProEquality analysis states.

And those who spend time on parental leave — 99 percent of whom are women, according to the analysis — will get less money. A new system now allows a parent to leave work for two-, three-, or four-year periods with lowered monthly allowances ranging from 3,800 Kč ($215) to 11,400 Kč depending on her salary before she left and on how long she will be out of the work force.

A wholly new element of the program is that women who were studying or unemployed and not paying health insurance before giving birth will automatically be forced to take the lowest amount of parental allowance, ProEquality says. Those who were working and making more than 16,750 Kč gross per month will be able to take an additional maternity allowance at 380 Kč a day.

As for the birth allowance, that compensation is also being lowered from 17,760 Kč per child to 13,000 Kč.

Topolánomics?

The main gist of the reforms — spearheaded by Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek’s party — is to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, Pavlík charges. “This government doesn’t care about inequalities between different social groups,” he says. “Practically all the reform steps are constructed in a way that [high-salaried] men are going to benefit.”

The income tax cuts will create a 200 billion Kč shortfall over the course of two years that has to be made up elsewhere, he says. “The government is going to take this money from the low-income and middle-income groups,” Pavlík says. Jakub Haas, spokesman for the Finance Ministry, calls this number “absolute nonsense.”

In any case, the lower income groups are heavily populated with women. The analysis points out that, on average, women make 25 percent less than do men and that gap increases to 35 percent among the university-educated.

“In all groups, the labor of women is valued less than the labor of men,” Pavlík says, adding that this pay gap is a reflection of the general value society places on women compared to men.

Among retirees, 80 percent of women receive less than 7,500 Kč per month while 94 percent of men make more than that.

With pension based on how much was made during the working years, women like Vlková who take time off to raise kids will likely pay for it later.

— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com

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