If the proposal goes through, men would switch from 2 weeks paternity leave to 18 weeks.
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If the couple decides to have a son or daughter, both agree to their care and upbringing. It seems obvious, but reality check usually comes a few weeks after delivery. In the case of heterosexual couples, the father has only two weeks’ holiday while the mother is 18 years old. He goes to work and she is left alone, living and/or suffering from motherhood. Then feelings similar to fear, panic, grief, and sadness appear. (The presentation of the presentation of labor reform is postponed to Wednesday)
So we spoke to four women to commemorate him and whose real names we left out because most of them are ashamed to publicly admit that they need their partners more vacation time and wanted them to take on their newborn care work as equals born. Would there be more informality? Banrep’s controversial analysis of the work
Camila remembers her baby crying when she had gas. They both cried, the girl pretended to be pinched, and the mother was helpless because no formula helped her. The father went to work and she was left alone in this scene. When he came home in the evening, he would get tired and fall asleep. But Camila was tired too. Once she threw pillows and pillows at her husband because he wouldn’t wake up no matter how many times she called him. Accidents in the kitchen became a habit, I boiled water, I forgot, the pot dried up and burned. (Highlights and shadows of labor reform, for which there would already be a paper this week)
Andrea still feels the loneliness that accompanied her when she had her first daughter. Recall your partner’s frustration and sadness at having to go to work. She says she felt a strange feeling knowing she was privileged to have him in a country where most families are mums running the household and on paid maternity leave.
At the time, she couldn’t help but feel sad that she wasn’t able to share this experience with her partner, that she had to take responsibility alone, that she felt the weight of the responsibility of this life without any other support. Nursing alone created anxiety and mental and physical exhaustion that stayed in her body for months, quietly because of this social mandate that promises us a “perfect” motherhood and postpartum period. (The problems of the bill proposing the adoption of fetuses from the womb)
Lucía also remembers being tired, especially at night. She was a first-time mom, her partner didn’t have a driver’s license and her baby looked yellow a week after birth. She had to go to the clinic alone, where it was determined that it was bilirubin. Her mother and in-laws supported her. Unlike what Mariana was going through, who lived in a different city than her family’s. She was hospitalized with her baby for 15 days. When she got home she was alone as her husband’s paternity leave had expired.
Paternity leave came about tentatively in Colombia around the 1990s, when women could give their partner one of their weeks. The men then received four working days, which later became eight working days. And recently 14 days, so two weeks. The mother, on the other hand, is now entitled to 126 days, i.e. 18 weeks. (Nursing work, a community task)
Gustavo Petro’s government wants to change this reality. In the labor reform he proposes a 12-week paternity leave, which would provide a balance as the woman could continue to take her last six weeks of her maternity leave and leave them to her partner. The increase would be gradual so employers would not be affected as badly. Once the law is passed, the license will remain in place for six weeks; in 2024 it would increase to eight weeks; in 2025 it would reach 10 weeks; and in 2026, at 12 weeks.
Adriana Camacho Ramírez, employment lawyer and professor at the Universidad del Rosario, finds it problematic and abrupt that paternity leave is being extended in just three years and believes that more time is needed. Although it is not the companies that pay for the leave but Social Security through the EPS, they have to hire other people to replace the father who has been out of office for three months. “It’s good that the change is happening, but that it will happen many years from now.” (We need to talk about the gender pension gap)
Before the House Third Committee this week, Treasury Secretary Ricardo Bonilla defended the feasibility of labor reform, assuring that “it has no tax cost” except for paternity leave, which would do so because it would apply to all public and private workers. Alejandra Trujillo, labor lawyer and coordinator of projects on democracy, unions and gender at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) in Colombia, estimates that the approximate cost would be 0.044% of GDP.
Should the project be approved, Colombia would be the Latin American country with the most extensive paternity leave. According to a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), it is already at the top of the ranking together with Venezuela and Paraguay. (Who cares about those who care about us?)
According to lawyer Alejandra Trujillo, among the world’s most advanced countries are Sweden, where the license for fathers and mothers has been the same since 1974 and is 16 months each, of which three months are non-transferable; Iceland with five non-transferable months and two transferable months; Germany at 14 months; and Spain, which has a 16-week parity leave.
The ILO has highlighted that only four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cuba, Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay) have dared to recognize parental leave, indicating shared responsibility as it is available to both mothers and fathers. However, the figures show that men hardly use these licenses.
The organization considers it essential that the models favor greater participation by men, for example through the allocation of non-transferable vacation time paid for by social security and through the implementation of information and awareness-raising campaigns.
Attorney Trujillo believes that parity leave has a transformative effect, distributing care work and reducing the gender gap in employment, but recognizes that Colombian society is conservative on gender roles. In fact, there is already speculation that the reform article will bring forth proposals to limit paternity leave to just five weeks.
The expert adds that this labor reform is the first to include a gender approach and the most progressive in terms of paternity leave, since Congress has expanded maternity leave much more than paternity leave, based on stereotypes that reduce us to care work and not on it men.
Trujillo also explains that a major opportunity was missed when paternity leave was last extended, which came in 2021 with Law 2114. Specifically, the period was increased from 8 business days (one and a half weeks) to 14 business and non-business days (two weeks). That is, they actually increased by two days. “There was no point in discussing a project to save two days and selling it as a great thing. Licensing remains very inconsistent and continues to make it increasingly difficult for women to get hired.
According to the ILO, women invariably do the majority of unpaid care work around the world. They are the ones who feed a baby, take care of a sick person, cook and clean the most without receiving any financial compensation. Men don’t do a quarter of what women do. Women devote 4 hours and 25 minutes (265 minutes) daily compared to 1 hour and 23 minutes for men (83 minutes). That’s like women working 201 days a year and men 63 days.
For Cindy Caro, social worker, Masters in Gender Studies and professor at the Universidad del Rosario, it is wonderful that men are starting to work at home and take responsibility for their children. “For me it is crucial that paternity leave is non-transferable because that means that your care is also transferable.”
The most recent survey by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) found that women have less free time. In Colombia, 90.3% of women performed unpaid work, dedicating an average of 7 hours and 44 minutes per day to those jobs, while men spent 3 hours and 6 minutes. “Due to time poverty, the inequality of women increases, we have fewer opportunities for advancement in the workplace and have stable jobs. Therefore, balancing the burden within the family will be a good strategy,” says Caro.
Another comment on labor reform concerns the use of the terms ‘fatherhood’ and ‘motherhood’, since the concept of family is broad and diverse, and not all families are cisgender and heterosexual, and not all are male and female. For this reason, it was proposed to use the generic terms “maternity leave for pregnant women” and “parental leave for non-pregnant women”.
Vivian Cuello, a researcher at Caribe Afirmativo, explains that today there is a legal vacuum as to what license applies to pregnant people who become pregnant who are not women, such as trans men or non-binary people. For example, if a trans man (a person who was identified as a woman at birth but later identifies as a man) has a baby, is it not known in Colombia whether he can take maternity or paternity leave, two weeks or 18 weeks? Even the labor reform does not solve this question.
In fact, a lawsuit is currently being discussed before the Constitutional Court calling for maternity leave to be extended to all pregnant people, including trans men and non-binary people. Plaintiffs, the Universidad del Norte Public Interest Litigation Group and the Trans Health League, want the terms used in the Labor Code, such as “worker,” “woman,” “mother,” and “mothers,” to be extended to include trans men and non-binary genders the ability to conceive.
In the case of same-sex couples made up of two gay men or two lesbian women, Cuello recalls that in its judgment the Constitutional Court ruled that the couple should decide who takes maternity leave and who takes paternity leave, but insists that this is the case should be regulated by law. So sexual diversity is another component promising a debate in labor reform, which was tabled this Wednesday and begins its formal process in Congress.