OF THE European Union’s 25 member states, Portugal has the fourth highest number of working mothers with children under 12. According to a report by Eurostat, only Slovenia, Denmark and Lithuania have more.
In addition, it showed that 60 per cent of mothers in Portugal with three or more children have jobs. The report into conciliation between work and family, carried out in 2003, shows that, in Portugal, 76 per cent of mums with children aged 12 and less go out to work, while in Lithuania the percentage is 79, Denmark 80 per cent and Slovenia 85 per cent.
The extreme opposite situation is the reality in Malta, where only 27 per cent of the country’s mums are going out to work. In Italy and Hungary, 50 per cent are working, and in Spain 51 per cent, which is just a little below the percentages in Greece and the Czech Republic.
According to the EU’s statistics office, many women with children arrange to work part-time. This preference is popular in Holland (55 per cent), the UK (36 per cent) and Germany (35 per cent). However, this does not seem to be the case in Portugal, where the percentage of mothers working part-time is among the lowest with only 7.2 per cent.
