Adriana Lastra has resigned from his position of responsibility in the PSOE for the “difficulty combining” the rest and care required by her pregnancy with the “intensity” of her work. The reasons for his resignation have been criticized by voices that denounce that pregnancy is still a reason for abandonment and labor inequality for women, but would the same response have occurred if the person who gave up his career to dedicate himself to fatherhood had been a men? Are politics and care compatible?
The scrutiny and questioning of pregnant women who have political functions is common in Spain. Carme Chacón, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Begoña Villacís or Irene Montero went through it. That if they take complete maternity leave, that if they join very soon in charge after giving birth, that if they work until an advanced stage of pregnancy… This time, the criticism has been baited with Lastra. In this, the times are reluctant to evolve.
“What is machismo when judging the body of women in politics? Of course, in politics and in all spheres of life,” says the writer and journalist Nuria Labari.
“Women will always be criticized, whatever we do, whatever we decide: either for not complying with established gender roles, for moving away from them, or for getting closer to them. (…) The question I would pose is whether this world of the political realm, which is the world of public relevance, is built for all people or has been built and is functioning, therefore, according to a type of dominant subjects, which are men; If there is room in that world for those who do not have that condition or do not behave as mandated by classical male regulations”, asks the professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Alicante María del Mar Esquembre Cerdá.
Balancing care and responsibility
Until today number two of the Socialist Party has decided to resign from her post alleging “major changes” in your personal life that require “tranquility and rest” and that they have forced her to “take a sick leave that is going to last for some time.” After explaining that being deputy general secretary is a task “very demanding in terms of time, effort and care”announced his resignation: “For all these reasons, and given the difficulty of combining the demands for rest and care, essential in my current situation, with the intensity required by the leadership of the Party, I have tendered my resignation.”
It was the president of the Principality of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, who made it public that the socialist leader is pregnant. From here, there have been criticisms of Lastra’s decision, one of the feminist figures more important of your party.
Adriana Lastra has submitted her resignation as Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE.
(I open thread – 1)
She does so due to the need to rest and remain calm due to her pregnancy.
(1) pic.twitter.com/yFIFAYYrQE— ? Adrian Barbon ?? (@AdrianBarbon) July 18, 2022
The tensions of politics
“People do not know what an organic position of the responsibility that they had to develop means: is full of tensions by definition. It is not comparable with the world of work, where at three or six you disconnect. There are no weekends, the phone does not stop ringing, there are no downtimes. And we’re talking about a risky pregnancy“, justifies the professor of Sociology at the University of Salamanca Soledad Murillo.
“Another thing is that after the maternity is absolutely compatible with holding an organic position, the issue is that it is very important to know that this decision responds to a specific situation and that it has a temporary dimension. I suppose that in the future he will occupy an organic position again, I am not saying in the same position, but in an equivalent one, with that rank and that status,” says the former Secretary of State for Equality.
From another place, the political scientist Verónica Fumanal considers that it is not health, but that there have been other reasons that have led Lastra to resign, for which she believes that this farewell “detracts from his career” and is “tremendously unfair for her”: “It does not do her justice because Adriana Lastra is indeed one of the leading women in feminism, in equality, in the fight for women’s rights without buts. And precisely that she resigns from the second most important position of the PSOE for motherhood sends a counterproductive message“, says Fumanal.
This political scientist reflects, as a result of Lastra’s departure, on how difficult it is for women to break glass ceilings. “We are talking about losing the site, with what it costs us to get there, my mother, to leave it like that,” she adds.
Judge a personal decision
Nuria Labari considers it essential not to confuse individual decisions with political communication: “It is not up to anyone to judge the individual decision, but the political communication of this has been disastrous. (…) For the institution I think it is clumsy to link the exit of a woman with responsibility with a pregnancy”, argues the author.
In his opinion, organizations with a discourse for equality and openly feminist have to be especially careful with the conciliation models they offer. The writer of ‘The best mother in the world’ believes that in a context in which women are not in an equal situation in the labor market, Lastra’s case should have been better communicated: “If there is no pressure, you have to explain it in detail“.
“Anyone can resign if they feel like it, what cannot be is a decision that has been provoked, they have been forced to take it or it has to do with the fact that for their party or their bosses pregnancy is incompatible with work” , insists Labari, who recalls that in 2022 there are still many women in Spain who quit their jobs.
But are care and politics so incompatible?
Esquembre denounces that the political exercise demands a dedication of 24 hours the seven days of the week and the 365 days of the year, “some demands that are inhuman”. “I am not going to assess his decision, that it will have cost him to make it, it is something very hard. I hope it was his decision, maybe it is not the one he would have made if the circumstances had been different, if the rules of access and permanence did not force you to withdraw completely from the scene or guarantee you a return“, says the professor of Constitutional Law.
In this sense, Murillo points to the need to think about what mechanisms politics has to defuse tensions, to seek collaborative work and to be more prone to agreements than to competitiveness. “But not only for women, but also for men. Politics is very difficult, it is full of tensions – which are not always explicit – and what you have to think about is why the political sphere is not more collaborative and less intense in the sense of that competition”, he reiterates.
What if it had been a man?
The evaluation made of the personal decisions of political figures continues to be marked -and what isn’t?- by gender. If instead of attending the resignation of the deputy secretary of organization of the PSOE, this Monday the news had been the resignation of a politician to dedicate himself to the care of his family, the response of public opinion would have differed.
This is how both Fumanal and Esquembre see it.
“It would have been something tremendously positive for man, not a criticism. What centuries of humanity have shown us is that those who have traditionally given up their careers for care have been women. A man who does it would be a rare bird and we would all be applauding with our ears,” the political scientist believes.
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“If it had been a man, great applause and applause. When they renounce their privileges and minimally assume the responsibility that corresponds to them, they live with a prize. We are punished“, regrets Esquembre.
To think and review.