Recent examples of how the gender perspective is integrated into the interpretation of Social Security rules

Abstract

Motherhood causes disarray not only in women’s professional careers, but also in their benefit allocations. Due to the connection between work and Social Security, the gender asymmetries, prejudices and stereotyped patterns one can observe in individual work relationships are reflected in the Social Security domain. It is wholly necessary either for legislative intervention to correct the system’s weakness, or for judicial interventions to adopt a transformative or a disruptive interpretation that integrates the Law’s corrective gender perspective in its application and interpretation of a case. The objective of this work was to
give a critical account of the arguments that, at the judicial level in Spain have been advanced to interpret, through the prism of gender, a series of articles of Spain’s General Social Security Law. We focused specifically on article 163 (incompatibility of pensions in the same regime), article 183 LGSS (allowance for co-responsible care of the infant) and art. 235 LGSS (equivalent contribution periods for childbirth).