Israel

Israel Haaretz.com

Day Care for the Children - Not for 'Working Mothers'
By Avirama Golan

It looks as if the next big thing in the public debate over the status of women in Israel will be day care for the children of working women. Everyone agrees that working women need an easily available and inexpensive arrangement for their children - mothers cannot join the demanding labor market when they have to take the kids to kindergarten before work and then take them from the kindergarten to the child-minder in the afternoon. The goal is to enable more women to join the labor market.

MK Zehava Galon (Meretz) used the following language to explain to the minister of Trade and Industry, Ehud Olmert, why she wants the government to help pay for child care in the workplace: "The possibility of high-quality, reasonably priced child care has a direct effect on the ability of parents to enter the job market... this ability is an important factor in achieving economic independence... and in achieving equal labor opportunities between men and women."

That is an excellent explanation. A government that demands that its citizens adapt themselves to a changing labor market, and which is stiffening the requirements for receiving unemployment allowances, must at least provide appropriate conditions for those who want to work. Even those people who do not agree that the state must work toward full employment for all its citizens (in other words, to determine that preventing unemployment is as important, for example, as the fight against inflation), would certainly agree that anyone who makes an effort not to be a burden on society should be helped.