COMMENT

Russia’s mothers are up in arms over New Year’s cuts in maternity benefits, which will now be calculated based on a woman’s average income over the last two years, rather than over a single year.

Young women have taken to the streets to protest the measures, which could see benefits for pregnancy, childbirth and childcare slashed in half or more in many cases.

The changes, contained in amendments to the law on social insurance, came into effect on January 1 after being approved by President Dmitry Medvedev.

In late December, a group of young women held pickets in Moscow, outside the Healthcare and Social Development Ministry, in St. Petersburg, and in the Siberian city of Izhevsk. At the Moscow protest women held banners that read: “Saving money on pregnant women = demographic collapse!” and “Closing budget gaps with newborn babies?”

“It means most of us will lose money,” said Anastasia Yermakova, the organiser of the Moscow picket. “2009 was a year of economic crisis when many women in Russia earned small salaries or even lost their jobs. Now maternity benefit will be calculated based on these small incomes.”

Secondly, maternity benefit will be calculated using income earned in the last 730 days, which gives women who took no time off in the last two years an advantage. The others will lose money, particularly women who spent long periods in hospital because of a high-risk pregnancy in the last year. Daily income and maternity benefit are calculated from the number of days when women are at work were.

© RIA Novosti. / Anton Denisov

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“Officials tell us that the new legislation will affect only a few women, but this is not true.

Do you know many pregnant women who worked 730 days in the last two years? Or women who earned more in 2010 than in 2009?” Yermakova said.

Yermakova said that, last year, she would have been entitled to 140,000 roubles ($4,600) in single childbirth benefit and 14,000 roubles ($460) in childcare benefit monthly. But the new legislation cuts this amount to 35,000 roubles ($1,150) and 3,000 roubles ($100), respectively, she says.

The authorities say no one will be paid less than the minimum wage – currently 4,330 roubles ($140). But this sum is only enough to buy five to 10 packs of nappies.

“It seems that young mothers who have just graduated from university and don’t have two years’ work experience and women who had breaks in work because of illness will receive benefits amounting to not much more than the minimum wage,” Yermakova said.

Protesters believe the new legislation was implemented to compensate for a budget deficit in the Social Insurance Fund, which is forecasted to grow to 200 billion roubles ($65.9 million) in 2011.

The ministry “promised that it will consider delaying the implementation of the law for already pregnant women, so that they can receive benefits under the old scheme in 2011,” said Diana Romanovskaya, a spokeswoman for the Moscow protesters. “But we will press for the cancellation of the new legislation. Everybody should be paid as they used to be.”

In 2009 Russia recorded a small growth in its population – of just 23,300 – for the first time in 15 years. But this was due to migration. In 2010, Russia’s birth rate was 12.4 babies per 1,000 people – not enough to maintain the population. According to the State Statistics Service, 1.49 million children were born in the country, while 1.7 million people died last year.

Additionally, Russia still has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. In 2009 alone, 1.16 million abortions were carried out – that’s 66.7 abortions for every 100 births.

Since 2007, mothers in Russia who have a second child are granted so-called “maternity capital” of 365,700 roubles ($12,000). The benefit is not paid in cash, but mothers can spend this sum on property, children’s education or put it towards a pension.

However, many Russian families cannot afford even to have a single child. Many women avoid planning pregnancies because of housing problems, low income, bad health and lack of support from family members. The independent Levada Centre found in a poll that 73 percent of Russians do not plan to have children in the next two or three years, and 11 percent say they do not want children at all.

Opponents of the maternity benefit cuts plan to hold their next national protest on January 18.

“We have a lot of supporters in many Russian towns and cities. Maternity benefit cuts have made people indignant. The state is behaving very cynically. On the one hand, officials call on us to have more children to prevent a demographic disaster in the country and promise to support mothers and families with children. But on the other hand, they are cutting our maternity benefits,” Yermakova said.