Cecilia Machado: Maternity according to income

There is a somewhat cruel reality of how the right to maternity presents itself differently for women of different income and employment conditions in Brazil: for some, the formal contract gives them the right to interruption –paid– from their jobs for for at least four months, with a guarantee of returning to their job, while for others, the only way to guarantee income is to return to work immediately after childbirth, with enrollment in a nursery, when a public place is available.

Maternity leave as provided for in our legislation is not there for nothing. Its benefits are clear. For working mothers, the leave allows for temporary leave, increasing job retention for women who would leave the labor market if a short break were not possible.

From the companies’ point of view, the separation is also positive: an eventual separation destroys all the learning and investments that companies and workers put into an employment relationship, with value in the continuity of employment. And for the baby, the first days of life are crucial for its brain architecture, which not only counts on all the interaction in which it is exposed in its family environment, but also adequate nutrition for its growth and development.

The social reality, however, is much more complex. Many mothers choose to leave their very young babies in a public nursery or day care center to return to the job market. They know that income security guarantees minimum subsistence and food conditions for their families. On the one hand, the existence of public day care centers – and of good quality – is positive, which allow mothers with young children to return to employment and economic self-sufficiency, something that is still far from the majority of mothers in poverty. Today, only 37% of children aged 0-3 are enrolled in day care, a rate that rises to 54% among the richest 25% and 40% in urban regions, but drops to 27% among the poorest 25% and 20 % in rural regions.

On the other hand, it is shocking that there is no labor guarantee or assistance network capable of guaranteeing a minimum time between many working mothers and their babies, as dictated by our labor legislation.

For mothers in a situation of informality, benefit or policies of permanence and flexibility are of little use for women who already have a formal contract, since the duality of our labor market delegates to 40% of employed women no labor rights, be it maternity leave , but also the guarantee of employment, unemployment insurance or FGTS resources. The recent Employs + Women and Youth Program instituted via MP last week is shortsighted to this reality, by guaranteeing resources for day care via FGTS, or work flexibility for mothers who already have a formal contract. Policies to support parenting via the formal job market are regressive in a context in which a considerable part of the workforce cannot access them, and a true policy to support parenting needs to face the additional problems that informality brings to women. .

As for families in poverty, Auxilio Brasil presented itself as a great opportunity to assist mothers with small children to guarantee income, especially considering the difficulties in enrolling in day care or the possibility of employment for mothers with babies with a few months to live. The benefit for early childhood, which offers a differentiated income transfer for poor families with children aged 0 to 36 months, calibrated the benefit at R$ 130, higher than all other variables.

However, the recent guarantee of a minimum amount of R$ 400 – perpetuated ad aeternum by the legislature recently – has diluted all the advantage that the differentiated benefit to young children conferred. Today, the average transfer per family is R$ 408, which means that almost all families – regardless of their family composition – receive the same amount, close to the minimum. Today, within Auxílio Brasil, there is no differentiated transfer for mothers with young children.

Whether via the labor market or via social assistance, the new proposals continue without convincingly resolving the inequality in which motherhood presents itself by income class in Brazilian society.