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Business leader shocks with anti-mum comments

The Local Spain
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Business leader shocks with anti-mum comments
Photo of pregnant woman: Shutterstock"

The straight-talking president of a top Spanish business association has caused a stir by saying she prefers not to hire women aged from 25 to 45 because they are likely to have children.

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"If a woman falls pregnant and you can't get rid of her for the eleven years after she's had her child, who is a company employing?" said Mónica de Oriol, the president of Spain's Business Owners Circle, referring to Spanish laws which allow mothers to work a shorter working day until their children are 12.

"I prefer to hire women older than 45 or younger than 25" to avoid the problem," she said at a meeting of Latin American business leaders in Madrid on Thursday.

"We are creating so many rules in this country and in Europe in favour of women that what we are doing is isolating them from a professional career," said Oriol, admitting her comments were less than politically correct.

"The sacrifice you make to become an executive has its price: either you get married to a public servant or you have a husband that likes children," she was quoted as saying in Spain's El País newspaper.   

The comments caused outrage on Twitter with many people expressing their anger over De Oriol's comments.

Mónica de Oriol you should be ashamed of yourself!

But those comments were not the first time De Orial has created a stir in 2014.

In April, she said that Spain's ninis (young people who are neither working nor studying) should be paid less than the minimum wage because they "were no good for anything".

She later apologized for those comments.   

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