Just when you think it’s all over ….

I went on the other day about having had a week of protests of one kind or another. Well they are not over yet. Tonight I left the library with a group of friends only to find that we had to walk half way home before we could catch our bus because there was a huge demonstration making its way along the street, carrying a large effigy of a woman dressed in white.

Of course, today is International Women’s Day. First seen at the end of the nineteenth century, during the industrial revolution when a lot of women started working in factories, El Día Internacional de la Mujer Trabajadora is celebrated on the 8th Of March and is recognised by the United Nations. In some countries it’s even a national holiday.

So there they were, a lot of women and a good few men, even some children in buggies walking down the road with the usual whistles and shouts but also some music giving a bit of a carnival atmosphere on this rather cold March evening.

Here in Galicia where women make up 46% of the work force and 55% of the university population they only fill 6% of managerial posts. They also earn on average 25% less than men. Factors like having children, taking jobs that work around the children, losing out in the promotion race (again because of taking time out to have children), being more frequently employed on temporary contracts and often doing more poorly paid jobs all affect the statistics.

Galician women are in fact better off than the average Spanish woman who earns 27.7% less than the average man. However they all fall behind the European average of ONLY 17.6%. Is that somehow meant to make the rest of European women feel better?

Last night on a TV programme called Comando Actualidad reporters were running around Spain looking for mileuristas, that is people whose take home pay is 1000 Euros. Through Andalucía, Extremadura, Madrid, Navarra they found an awful lot of them. Some people said they managed reasonably well, others said that it was hard to get to the end of the month.

The contrast between the parents paying large amounts of money to send their children to a pricey private school in Madrid and the young history teacher there earning her 1000 Euros was quite striking. They were getting very good value from the teacher, who declared that she was doing the job for the love it, for the satisfaction, not for a high salary, as she conducted her history lesson is what appeared to be very fluent English.

The workers at a town in Extremadura (I think) who were employed at the nuclear power plant did better, averaging 2000+. A young man working for Google in Madrid was very pleased with his situation. Not only was his monthly salary very satisfactory, thank you, but the company also provides free lunch for its employees! The city of Pamplona was declared to be one of the best places to live as the average salary there is well above the mileurista level apparently.

I was surprised at how willing people were to reveal their salary details, often showing wage slips as evidence and taking the reporters into their home to talk to other members of the family. Very few seemed unwilling to spill the beans, one notable case being a banker finishing off an expensive lunch in a very exclusive Madrid restaurant. He said it was muy feo to talk about money, especially over lunch!

One way many young people survive as mileuristas is by living at home with their parents. Most agreed that they could not afford a mortgage or even in many cases the rent for an independent dwelling. This is a factor which has, it seems, sent many young gallegos back home to the small towns and villages they left in search of a more independent, more affluent existence in a big city.

It is a fairly new phenomenon so there are no statistics as yet but it is one that seems to be growing. As businesses have contracted and hours have perhaps been reduced, these young people find that it is after all easier to head for home where they often don’t have to pay rent and, besides, the cost of living in general is cheaper. It’s hard being a young person today!