They say that Norway is the best country to be a mother because there mothers have some resources that I doubt we will never see here (and now with the crisis, even less). Such are the advantages they have that it seems that they must feel ashamed of others when they see how we live in Spain, because they have decided to lend us a hand.
Apparently, Norway has decided to contribute 10 million euros to create various projects with which to try to achieve equal opportunities in employment and to help achieve a better reconciliation of work and family life. Ten million euros, welcome to be, but that gives me the feeling that they will end up falling in a sack (keep reading and you will see that between Spain and Norway the differences are quite remarkable).
To begin with, in Norway they can choose, when having a baby, between taking a year of maternity leave charging 80 percent of their salary or ten months charging it in full. Most mothers have schedules that help make reconciliation possible, as they start at eight in the morning and leave at two in the afternoon. Companies behave in a different way than ours, because there, if the children are sick, they allow mothers to stop working at the company and continue doing it at home until the children are cured.
If you want to continue hallucinating, then read on: families they receive 127 euros a month from the state until the children turn 18 (yes, years). In addition, if the child is not going to daycare until two years of age, they can charge 450 euros per month during that time.
All this makes Norway be chosen every year by Save the Children as the best country to be a mother, and I do not say with this that I want Spain to be the same as Norway, because surely there are many things there that I would not like, but copy a little the philosophy that they defend there regarding motherhood would not be bad, honestly.
According to Juan Manuel Moreno, Secretary of State for Social Services and Equality:
The projects that are developed will serve to improve the employment situation in this country where, at present, society does not offer women true equality of opportunities.
And I, the truth, is that I am very skeptical in this regard. In Norway, women receive the same salary as men. In Spain they charge 22% less than average. In Norway, women have a 3% unemployment rate, while here it is 23.3%. In Norway they finish the day at noon ... here, here there is everything, of course, but surely there are a minority that make that schedule.
The fact is that our culture is very different from the Nordic. Here it gets dark later, the weather is better and we don't have dinner at six in the afternoon, but we do it at ten at night. Many differences that make us accustomed to walking at seven eight on the street, making the last purchases of the day or, if you hurry me, going to the shopping centers, which do not close until ten.
Then there is the latent machismo from which we have not yet completely detached, the way of acting of some entrepreneurs who refuse to hire young women because “any day they get pregnant” and the way of thinking of the other workers, which seems to bother us when a woman decides to take more care of her child and stops come to work because they have given him a low 16-week misera, which leaves the baby without parents for several hours a day when he is not yet 4 months old.
I don't know what you will think, but me I get the impression that Norway is throwing money here in Spain. I wish I was wrong.
Thanks to Águeda for sending us the hint of this news.
