What Are the Chances of Getting Czech Women Back Into the Labor Market?

Insufficient capacity of preschool facilities, lack of flexible working arrangements and persistent social stereotypes are the most common obstacles to Czech women willing to return to work after maternity leave. Flexibility in the form of part-time jobs, home office or job sharing could often help women with children to get back to work more easily. Czech society is very conservative in this respect compared to the rest of the EU Member States.

These weaknesses of the Czech labor market have also been pointed out in the set of recommendations by the European Commission within the European semester and were the main topic of a debate devoted to obstacles in the labor market for women on maternity leave organised by CEBRE on 17th December 2013 at the European House in Prague. Hana Velecká from the European Commission informed that the negative impact of parenthood on women’s employment in the Czech Republic is the largest in the EU, more precisely 35.8 % compared to European average of 9.6 %. A total of 5 011 kindergartens are currently available in the Czech Republic, 95 % of them being managed by the public sector, 4 % by the private sector and 1 % by churches. The main challenges in preschool childcare identified by Jaroslava Vatalová from Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic are insufficient capacity of preschool facilities, high number of children in the classroom, as well as unqualified teachers due to lower financial rewards compared to primary schools.

Apart from lack of flexible working arrangements and shortage of kindergartens, Petra Janíčková, founder of website focused on job opportunities for women on maternity leave, finds an unwillingness of managers to work with this target group as a big issue. According to her, the government should be obliged to provide care for children from the age of 3 years, but up to 40 % of children could not find a place in kindergartens due to insufficient capacity. Janíčková wrapped up the debate with the thought, that Czech society needs more role models to break social stereotypes.