Choosing between family and work should not be an option

Young women in West Africa often find it hard to get a job. Holding on to it once they start a family can even be harder. 

"After my master’s degree, I successfully passed the civil service entrance exams. I was taken on as an advisor in a ministry.”

The career of this young woman from Dakar (called Kh F to preserve her anonymity) got off to a promising start in her home country, Senegal. However, things took a turn for the worse two years after she began working, when she married and had her first child.

Life quickly became stressful for Kh F: "I had to get up at 5 a.m. to drop my daughter off at my mother’s and then go to work," she remembers. "I got home at about 9 p.m. and had to get dinner ready. I never went to bed before midnight."

Under this pressure, Kh F started making mistakes at work. At home, she was faced with an angry husband who reproached her for not taking enough care of him, their daughter and their home. Kh F became depressed and her marriage broke down. It was only thanks to support from a trade union that she managed to keep her job.

"Why do we have to choose between our jobs and our families? It's so unfair," she asks.

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Source & Copyright: ILO