The effects of maternity protection to establish equality of treatment between men and women at work

Abstract

The labor legislation, originated as a response to the social issues of the early 20^th century, structured a women protection model which gradually marginalized her from the labor market and, in turn, consolidated a pact of production and reproduction from the archetype of man as a provider and woman as a caregiver. This is evident in the configuration of the maternity protection regulations provided by the Labor Code, which ignore the co-responsibility of men and women regarding employment and family, strongly limiting the possibility of professional development of women when making them exclusively responsible for the care of their children. In turn, this legislation still has the traditional philosophy of imposing obligations to the employer regarding the employment of women, which discourages such employment. Due to the aforementioned, this research is aimed at questioning and re-stating the current working-women protection model in order to effectively materialize the equality of treatment between men and women with family responsibilities.