Manama: Bahrain’s labour minister has joked that he should be made member of the all-females Supreme Council for Women (SCW) for his persistent championing of women’s rights.
Majeed Al Allawi made the light claim at the end of a week during which he had to face a barrage of criticism, mainly from women MPs for supporting calls to amend the private sector labour law in order to give women more rights, including more time to look after their children.
The minister sparred publicly with and Lulwa Al Awadhi, the SCW secretary general, at a conference to announce the holding of a career exhibition that will offer more than 5,000 jobs to women.
Al Allawi said there were concerns that more advantages for women would make their prospects for employment less attractive for the private sector, stressing that Bahrain’s constitution called for reconciliation between women’s duties as mothers and as professionals in the public sector.
Similar claims were made earlier by the business community and female members of the upper chamber who said that the numerous days and hours off given to women to look after their children were ultimately harming their stature and turned them into an employment risk.
Women breast-feeding their babies and working in the public sector are given two hours daily off their office hours, while those in the private sector are given only one hour.
On Monday, a plan submitted by MPs from the lower chamber to their peers in the upper chamber to give female private sector employees two half-hour breaks a day for child care resulted in an unusual standoff between Al Allawi and the female MPs.
The parliamentarians insisted that the plan coupled with a call to bring up the breastfeeding time to two hours in the private sector meant a serious blow to women’s chances to getting hired.
However, Al Allawi reiterated that such fears and concerns were groundless.
“That is not the real issue. The claim that numerous advantages will make employers in the private sector avoid hiring women is not true. Many women are not attracted to the private sector because it does not offer them the same advantages and privileges as the public sector,” he said
“There are blatant discrepancies in the salaries, working hours and retirement conditions that make it very difficult for us to convince the unemployed to take up jobs in the private sector,” said Al Allawi, a former opposition figure who became labour minister in 2002.
According to the minister, in the most advanced countries, companies provide nurseries so that female employees can take time off and look after their babies.
“Every time we try to come up with something good for women, someone is jumping from his seat with the productivity excuse. We have been trying to convince companies in Bahrain to emulate this example, but so far no to no avail,” he said.
“The West never said that pregnancy, breast-feeding or taking care of children was affecting work - on the contrary, it was improving it,” he said.
“It is better to have a woman work productively for four hours in a relaxed and comfortable environment rather than have her work eight hours while thinking about her children's welfare.”
