I love my children. They make me
laugh, they make me proud, and more often than not - they drive me insane (in a
good sense, no need to reach for the phone and call social services! )! I
equally love my job, I love meeting new women, talking to them about their
lives, thinking about ways in which we can promote and support each other.
The two are often incompatible.
No matter how many times I tried, taking a two year old into a meeting about
the next issue of the Bristol Woman magazine does not make for a productive
time. At least not for me. Nor does
taking a 5 year old to an interview with a potential volunteer. No matter how
many gadgets you give them (the child, not the volunteer!), iPads, loom bands,
pencils - the inevitable "mummy I'm bored" is bound to sound into
your ears 15 minutes into the meeting. I
often have to take out the big guns - glitter and glitter glue, but then we all
risk coming out of the meeting looking very sparkly.
This is why I have to resort to
childcare, and in our case we decided to choose a nursery. We have been very pleased with it, and I feel
the environment they provide is both safe and stimulating for our children's
development. By this point I see the
invoice, and this is where the positive stops. When I have paid the invoice,
transportation and other associated costs, I'm back to square one.
I'm not re-discovering the wheel
here. Childcare in the UK is expensive, good childcare is even more expensive,
and only more affluent parents can afford it. I just want to throw it in here
that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is full of
articles about our rights as humans to dignity and the free development of
personality, employment, equal pay,
education. While childcare responsibilities will affect men too, it is
primarily women who will either have to adjust their dreams and personal
development choices for their children or pay for them.
Yes, the Declaration of Human
Rights does say that each state should be guaranteeing these rights in
accordance with their resources. But I know countries with a GDP much lower
than the UK where childcare provision is much more affordable and more
widespread.
Love that you're writing about this Cezara. I'm a Mum of two little girls (2&4) and am also doing a Masters in Human Rights Law (at Bristol Uni) and the irony of how often the two of these are incompatible is not lost on me! Last year, one of my modules (Gender, Law and Sexuality) looked specifically at the issue of labour law and childcare, and despite facing the challenges myself on an everyday basis, looking at it from a far more objective standpoint, really was an eye opener. I guess I'd always thought trying to balance a job or studying with having a family, was (while a bit unfair) fundamentally my own problem. However, when studying the issues and the systems which underpin them, I realised just how skewed the entire paid work vs unpaid work system really is, and just how dependent it is on (almost exclusively female) unpaid caregivers. It shouldn't really have surprised me as much as did, but it did... and it seems the deeper I delve, the deeper the gender bias goes... Looking forward to more blogs/articles on this area! Juliet x
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