Labor Day for the women of Lanzarote

May 1 2018 (19:05 WEST)

Today is Labor Day, a day that few women in Lanzarote will be able to celebrate because our main job market is the hospitality industry and we cannot aspire to take a day off in the middle of a holiday weekend.

In this post I will break down many of the labor discriminations suffered by women on our island, and every time I hear studies that talk about this issue, I imagine their theorists sitting in one of our bars taking the lives of Lanzarote women as an example for their research work.

Yes, whether we like it or not, in Lanzarote we suffer all possible labor discriminations and we even suffer social situations that make it difficult for us to develop professionally. It is true that many of the problems I will describe are also suffered by men, but the reality is overwhelming, women are the most affected.

 

Family and work balance

As already said, the job market for women in Lanzarote is the hospitality industry, a job with working hours that are difficult to reconcile with our role as mothers, mainly because our partners also find work in the same field. Seen this way, it is not a purely female problem, but it does affect us, since when hiring staff they prefer men, who, according to popular belief, do not take time off because of raising children. We know, and of course they know in the business environment, that discriminating against us for motherhood is illegal, but in Lanzarote they also know that we do not report it because this island is small, we all know each other and reporting them would definitively close the doors to employment. It has happened to me, it has happened to my friends, in every interview we will be questioned about motherhood, directly or indirectly.

Apart from that situation, we find another problem that our institutions do not try to solve, it is a fact that our biggest source of work is the hospitality industry, but its schedules do not allow for reconciliation. Today is a good day to ask for the creation of nurseries with more flexible hours and, of course, more affordable, because those that exist with extended hours cost almost what we earn working (and I say it is a political problem because in the specifications for the concession of nurseries I have never seen these conditions reflected). Having a suitable place to leave our children when we go to work is extremely difficult if a person does not have a strong family or social network. Many of us do not have it and when it comes to choosing who stays at home to take care of the family, we are the ones chosen.

So many employment statistics in Lanzarote are useless if the institutions are not able to read with a gender perspective and ask themselves how to solve the fact that women are the main holders of precarious contracts or, what is worse, that we are the part of the active population that no longer seeks employment. Solutions are needed because so much generalized paving on the island will not make it possible for our women to be included in the labor market.

Gender discrimination

Let's not be hypocritical and say that they do not exist, it is at least curious to find behind a counter serving the public, an overweight woman or a woman without makeup, the more luxurious the store in question, the more noticeable this difference is. Men with beer bellies do not suffer this discrimination, we do not demand beauty from them.

There is also a social stereotype that determines that a woman in love only takes care of her partner and stops being productive, perhaps many readers did not know it (including me until recently) but the business world in Lanzarote not only knows it, but uses this premise to ask its workers not to have a partner. It sounds incredible but two young women have already told me this experience, women who, due to inexperience and the need to work, had to hide their personal lives under the threat of losing their jobs. It seems like fiction but it is real, this happens today in Lanzarote. They demand that our young women even give up love! They do it knowing that they will not be able to report it for two fundamental reasons: the coercion is verbal, and cannot be proven, and most importantly, they do not want to close their future employment on the island (remember that the island is small).

Finally, let's talk about those women who manage to pass the famous "Glass Ceiling" and come to occupy a position of power among men who do not accept it. We would be surprised by the number of women who have come to our health centers as a result of suffering Workplace Mobbing on our island, women who have reported it and in response got a change of location within their company, women who had to leave because they could not get evidence. It does not happen so far away, it is not a minor problem, it is our reality and because of this many of us do not dare to climb professionally.

Everything described exists on our island, I am convinced that if we launch a #metooempleofemeninolanzarote many stories would emerge that are at least shocking and perhaps, would it not be a bad idea for a day like today? because more than celebrating, the women of Lanzarote should defend ourselves today.

 

By Victoria Sanz

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