WUNRN
KAZAKSTAN - WOMEN FIGHT MATERNITY
PAY CUTS
Activists
hope campaign will prompt wider action on women's rights.
By Saule Mukhametrakhimova
- Central Asia - 20 Mar 2013
A campaign against changes to the law on loss of earnings during pregnancy
could coalesce into a broad movement fighting for the rights of women in
Kazakstan, activists say.
The campaign was triggered by a February 17 change to the law covering
compensation for loss of earnings during pregnancy and maternity leave.
Separate from maternity pay, which is paid for the first year of a child's
life, the loss-of-earnings benefit covers a four month period.
The new law caps the amount that women can claim if they earn more than
1,230 US dollars a month. Women in the higher income bracket are now eligible
for payments not exceeding 5,200 dollars for the four months. Employers can
make up the difference, but this is optional and subject to negotiation.
Almaty journalist Madina Aimbetova, for example, would previously have
received 7,515 dollars in loss-of-earnings benefit, but the sum will now be
capped at 2,100 dollars less than that. She doubts her employer will make up
the shortfall, as this is not mandatory.
A group called Fair Maternity Leave is campaigning against the law, and has
expressed concern at the lack of public debate about changes it believes will
lead to sexual discrimination in the workplace.
Aliya Delmasheva, a member of the group in the capital Astana, says
campaigners are exploring possible avenues for getting the law revoked, lobbying
members of parliament and approaching the state prosecutor’s office.
If that tactic fails, Fair Maternity Leave will push for amendments that
alter the way employers pay into the national Social Insurance Fund. This, they
say, could allow higher benefits to be paid without bankrupting either
employers or the welfare fund itself – the latter risk being the reason that
legislators gave for changing the law.
Fair Maternity Leave now has around 9,000 Facebook followers and has
organised several small demonstrations and flash mobs in Almaty and Astana.
Over 100 letters have been sent to members of the parliament, with petitions
also directed to President Nursultan Nazarbaev and the prosecutor general’s
office.
According to Dana Amanova, a financial manager with the Central Asia office
of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, what really annoys
campaign participants is the fact that women will have to negotiate any top-up
payments with their employers.
Alexandra Alekhova, a 32-year-old Almaty journalist with the Vremya
newspaper, is five months pregnant with her second child. A single mother who
does not receive child support, she would have been able to afford to stay off
work for four months with her new baby under the old system. Now, she says, she
faces a dilemma – either cutting the time she takes off work, or trying to pare
down her outgoings drastically enough to survive.
Alekhova said the campaign was being backed by trade unions and
non-government groups. A March 12 discussion on gender policy, attended by
government officials as well as civil society activists, ended with an
agreement to set up a centre to coordinate their efforts.
There is more at stake than protecting the interests of middle-class women,
Alekhova argues. The real issue is the basic guarantee of women’s right to work
and have children.
“I reckon that by the summer, a small group of discontented women could
have turned into a large slice of the population, with people of all income
groups represented,” she said. “Everyone realises that if they’re moving
against pregnant women at the moment, they’ll impose cuts on other categories
later."
Others expressed resentment at the lack of prior notice.
“I am fed up that decisions are made for me without any discussion,”
Aimbetova said.
She said the amendment was indicative that conditions for women were
deteriorating more generally, so the campaign needed to be broadened.
“Policies towards women should be changed – I mean the reduction in alimony
payments and the raising of the retirement age for women to 63,” she said,
referring to two recent proposals from the government.
Officials defend the change to the law by saying that if the welfare fund,
which covers loss of earnings due to unemployment, disability or loss of
principal breadwinner, had to sustain the rate of payouts it had been making,
it would be in the red by 2025. Since 2008 payments, the fund has been made
responsible for maternity and loss-of-earnings payments, which formerly rested
with employers.
Labour minister Serik Abdenov told the Vremya newspaper that the previous
system had encouraged a 500-plus per cent increase in the number of working
women who decided to have children, from 70,000 in 2007 to 380,000 last year.
He claimed that the new law affects only 1.2 per cent of women, those who
were high earners and who under the old system would effectively have drawn
more out of the fund than their employers contributed.
Abdenov acknowledged that the change was needed because officials had
miscalculated the costs of running the scheme as it was. But he said the
previous policy was based on the information available at the time, when wage
increases and the steep rise in childbirth rates had not been factored in.
The minister met representatives of Fair Maternity Leave in mid-February,
and he has promised to organise talks with employers’ associations and to
persuade companies to commit to paying the difference between the old
loss-of-earnings payments and the new capped amount.
At the beginning of March, Abdenov’s ministry published a list of
businesses in various parts of Kazakstan that have agreed to cover the
shortfall.
Campaigners say they will reject offers that do not offer long-term
solutions for all working women.
Journalist Alekhova said that no woman would dare press her employer into
taking on the extra payment. Even if large businesses agreed to do so, this
would affect a limited number of women.
“There aren’t many large enterprises in Kazakstan," she said.
"The majority of people are employed by small and medium-sized
businesses,” adding that it was unrealistic to expect the authorities to
negotiate with tens of thousands of companies.
A staff member of an international organisation based in Kazakstan – who
asked to remain anonymous told IWPR that Fair Maternity Leave was the first
significant grassroots campaign organised by women with no prompting from
politicial parties or international bodies.
“There would have been no such outcry had the ministry carried out a public
debate beforehand,” she said, adding that educated middle-class women
contributed to the economy by remaining in employment and paying taxes.
“These women are trying to juggle pursuing a career and having children,”
she said.