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Mother's day on kuningattaren synttäripäivä Thaimaassa

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Äitien asema Thaimaassa on hyvin kaukana siitä mitä se on Suomessa.

Kirjoitus tämän päivän lehdessä heittää haastetta uudelle pääministeri Yingluck Shinawatralle. Onhan hän nainen ja äiti itsekin.

Paljon on parannettavaa thaimaalaisessa yhteiskunnassa niin naisten kuin äitien asemassa.

Toivotaan ,että Ms. Yingluck tekee parhaansa heidän puolesta.
PellervoHollo onkin jo oman kortensa kekoon kantanut.

Today is a historic Mother’s Day. Forget the usual practice of yesteryears when male prime ministers made lofty speeches to glorify motherhood on Mother’s Day, without any concrete policy support. At long last, Thailand has its first female prime minister. Not only that. She is also a mother. A working mother. There are thus high expectations of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in honouring Mother’s Day not only with a deeper understanding of working mothers’ double responsibilities, but also with policy commitment to make it easier for working mothers to juggle between work and motherhood.

Given her wealth and support from the family business empire led by her elder brother and de facto Pheu Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, Ms Yingluck obviously need not worry about gender discrimination which hampers most working women.

But as a mother, Ms Yingluck should understand well that apart from the ability to better provide for their children through equal pay and equal opportunity, what most mothers want is the ability to ‘‘be there’’ for their children, especially during their first five formative years.

This is what better pay and higher work positions cannot offer. The law only allows a limited paid maternity leave of three months. Those who want to take longer care of their infants have no choice but to quit their jobs. But that is the choice of the privileged few. Most working mothers cannot afford that. With the relatively low maternity leave payment, most women factory workers cannot even take full leave, being forced by economic necessity to rush back to work.

The three-month maternity leave also means that working mothers have to cut short breast-feeding, which affects the infant’s health and immunity. Without nursery support, women workers have to send their babies to their parents back home.
Consequently, the past 40 years of Thailand’s economic development with no support for working mothers, has created generations of children with distant parenting, resulting in many social and youth problems.

Prime Minister Yingluck can help change this if she turns the long-neglected proposals from women and other civil society groups into reality. Among them: a free or affordable nursery in the workplace; eight working hours with decent pay so mothers have time for their children, more comprehensive student loans with flexible payback arrangements, better healthcare coverage with easy access to medical compensation, housing security, standard quality education for children across the social strata, with more diverse options for students taking the vocational route; a more effective alimony law and better support for single mothers.

In other words, what working mothers need is a better welfare support system. They are not talking about money. They are talking about social security and a better future for their children.

Meanwhile, a large number of mothers in the agricultural sector are concerned at the destruction of the natural environment which is the source of their families’ livelihood. They want the government to put an end to the use of toxic chemicals in farming and industry. Mothers along the Gulf of Thailand also want Ms Yingluck to review Pheu Thai’s environmentally destructive land reclamation project.

When you help a mother, you help the whole family and an entire society. Here is a chance for Ms Yingluck to show why it matters for womenfolk to have a woman as prime minister. Don’t let them down.

Bangkok Post 12.8.2011

Hyvää Äitien päivää!
Meillä vietetään sitä nyt Suomessa ja skypen kautta anoppiin Thaimaassa. Pari viikkoa vielä Suomessa ja sitten kotiin.