“From day one Sofi told me that she wanted to have a family. She even asked me: ‘Are you going to want to have more children?’ and I was like ‘Yes, I have no idea, it could be’”, he says Jasmine Beccar Varelaabout the first appointment with the lawyer Sofia Accattoliher current partner, with whom she has just had simona. “Maybe I don’t know if I would have considered it alone or I don’t know what I would have done if I had a woman by my side who didn’t want to have children. I don’t know if I would have insisted.”explains during an interview with Celeste Montanari for +PEOPLE.
It was a totally different maternity project than the one she faced in 2018 with her ex-husband, Franco Stivalafrom whom she separated while pregnant with her son Titus. to get pregnant, Jazmín and Sofía resorted to a treatment that involved an anonymous sperm donor: they took the process completely naturally and, in principle, did not delve into the bureaucratic obstacles they were going to face.
“We did not make inquiries about how I had to register my daughter in the Registry of Persons. And that even brought me a paperwork problem. I had not found out that you have to submit a protocol that you have to certify at the Ministry of Health. When we are leaving the sanatorium and we want to go register Simona, they ask us for the protocol. Nobody notified us. It was obviously our mistake not to find out things that a person in a heteronorm situation doesn’t have to find out.” reflects Beccar Varela, who played Luján in Rebel way.
The example that there is still a lot of work to do to achieve full recognition of diverse families before the law became evident before Simona’s birth, when the time came to schedule maternity leave for Jazmín’s work.
What does the law say about maternity leave?
The law establishes 90 mandatory days of maternity leave covered by the ANSES for pregnant people and only two days for parents, considered “secondary caregivers”., an indicator of the collective vision regarding the distribution of care tasks in the home. However, the multinational for which Jazmín works as Communications Manager has the benefit of two months’ leave for this role.
Regarding her fight in ANSES for the extension of the license for non-pregnant mothers, Jazmín details: “It is a company with a very advanced diversity agenda, but there are very few companies that have it. And few of us have the privileges of working in those companies. There are many people who do not have it. That’s why we’re starting this fight”.
People: At what point did you realize that this right was needed?
Jasmine Beccar Varela: –When Sofi was pregnant with Simona, I spoke to the guys from Legal and Human Resources at my job to ask them what kind of license I was going to have. Obviously, First it was a private discussion in the company, because it was going to generate a precedent. I was in a hybrid. That’s where we started moving this box. She told Sofi: “Well, I’m asking for maternity leave.” “But you’re not pregnant,” Sofi told me. “But I am a mother!”
G: –What happens if they don’t recognize you as a mother?
VBV: –You witness the birth of your son and go back to work the next day. Because you are neither mother nor father, you are nothing. You are a person who accompanies his wife to give birth. So the conversation was: “what do we do?”. Maternity leave is hard. And paternity leave is a benefit that the company I work for has for being a “secondary caregiver”, that is the name given to the person who is not pregnant. And that’s where I started to feel uncomfortable, and when I feel uncomfortable I have to wag my tail and I have to start knocking on doors. I am like that, restless.
G: –They had to take the issue to ANSES.
VBV: –At work they told me to prepare the form that must be submitted to ANSES when you are a mother. Without differentiating pregnant mom or not. ‘At least they reject it, because they’re going to reject it,’ they told me from legal officials at work. Sofi told me: ‘Don’t leave there without rejection. You need proof that they are refusing to give you a license.’ So I go with the form signed and endorsed by the company. And the guy from ANSES looks at me and says: ‘But are you pregnant?’ No, my wife is the one who is pregnant. “And is your wife in a dependency relationship?” Yes. ‘And your wife is going to take leave too?’ Clear. ‘I have a problem’, he tells me she. ‘I can’t enter a form. Because it says here that you are not the mother. That the mother is Sofia’. ‘But I’m also the mom,’ I tell her. ‘Yes, but you are not pregnant, and I do not have any code to enter you into the system.’ So you’re turning me down? ‘Yes, I have to reject it.’ So, can you give me a letter that you’re turning it down? ‘No, I can’t’ Well, can we talk to legal?
“A very nice situation happened there. The person who was treating me and the ANSES legal team began to see how we would solve this issue. There was never a situation of rejection. A man attended me, which is no small thing. I left that week with the promise that they would go through legal first, but that they would give me the rejection letter. And they complied. A week later I went to look for the letter, the man who gave it to me told me: ‘good luck with this, I congratulate you’. And that’s where the trial started. I left crying that day. I spoke with my best friend, who is Tito’s godmother, and with Sofi, saying: ‘Something started here, there are people here who are accompanying us,’ “she recalls.
Watch the full interview with Jazmín Beccar Varela on +GENTE!
G: –How much struggle to be a mother, right?
VBV: –Yes, actually it is because they recognize you. Just because you don’t gestate doesn’t mean you stop being a mom or dad. In other words, the rights are the same. I never doubted that I was a mother. Of course, the only ones who wanted to make me doubt it and who didn’t make me doubt it, nor did they make me feel the least bit, were the people who tell you “you didn’t gestate, you’re a dad”. Like they want to lead you to something negative. They want to make me equal to a man, as if it hurt me to be equaled to a man. Because? Don’t you understand that I’m not a man?
G: – In what situation is the cause now?
VBV: We won the first instance. The first instance judge agreed with us. ANDo I was looking for this time with my daughter, the first three months that any mother has the right to spend, because you have to understand that the leave is not only for the puerperal woman and to recover. It’s a part of the leave, of course, but it’s also for the time the baby needs. The right here is placed on the child. It happens that it is wrong at work and they give it to the mother or father, and in reality it is the child’s right to spend the first months of life with the people who wanted to bring him into the world. Stop thinking about a mother or father license and start thinking about the right of that boy or girl.
Wrote for PEOPLE: Gabriel Orqueda.
Furniture: @tiendafc / Carpet: @thecarpet.co / Makeup: George Rodriguez and Yamila Boniti for @hairmalambo
More information at gente.com.ar
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Original Publisher: https://www.gente.com.ar/actualidad/de-que-se-trata-la-licencia-para-las-madres-no-gestantes-por-la-que-luchan-jazmin-beccar-varela-y-sofia-accattoli/
