Beware of the baby
The participation of women in Poland's labor market is steadily growing. But for many of them, having a job comes at the cost of not having a baby. This is often not because they don't want to have children, but rather because they are afraid of losing their job if they do.
According to a recent report called "Motherhood and the Professional Work of Women," published by research company Millwardbrown SMG/KRC, every fifth woman surveyed had postponed having a baby because of the risk of unemployment. Moreover, 32 percent declared that if they became pregnant they would face serious problems at work.
These fears are not ungrounded. The firm's research found that 22 percent of women had met with a negative reaction when informing their employer of a pregnancy. The data also showed that 17 percent of employers claimed that a pregnant woman is a worse employee, and that 52 percent of employers considered the chances of a pregnant woman finding a job close to zero.
Poor business culture
"This data is appalling," comments Dariusz Karłowicz, president of the St. Nicolas Foundation, which, along with several other institutions, is launching a public advertising campaign called Mama w pracy (Mother at work) about the situation of mothers in the labor market. Karłowicz explains that the current state of affairs results from Poles' as-yet short experience of capitalism.
"Only 30 percent of women of reproductive age are employed and have a work contract," says Marta Cichowicz-Major of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy's Department of Women, Family and Counteracting Discrimination and coordinator of another public-awareness campaign entitled Kobieta-Rodzina-Praca (Woman-Family-Work).
"The remaining group of women does not have any rights to maternity leave," she stresses. But apart from difficulties with work contracts, there is also a problem with the general approach to pregnancy in the workplace. "There is a common perception that pregnancy is a problem, like a disease at work," says Cichowicz-Major.
A barren future?
The consequences of this attitude to pregnancy may be very serious indeed. According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS) the annual rate of childbirth in Poland has dropped by half within the last three decades, from 701,000 in 1980 to 366,000 in 2005. At present, the average fertility rate in Poland is 1.24 children per woman - the lowest in the EU. Demography experts say that without a higher birth rate the Polish labor market - along with the pension system - is in danger of collapse.
But no change in attitude will suffice if it isn't backed up by a proper legislative framework. At the moment the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy is preparing a bill on employees' rights, which implements EU criteria. "We hope to submit it to the Sejm for voting by the end of the year," says Cichowicz-Major.
