Sweden’s Minister for Employment and Gender Equality has called on migrant women not to have more children than they can support, noting high rates of unemployment among women born overseas.
Minister for Employment and Gender Equality Eva Nordmark has called on foreign-born women to not have more children than they can afford to support and stated that more migrant women should be focused on having careers.
“Everyone who can work should work. You should not have more children than you have to support, it is an important starting point,” Nordmark told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
“You have as many children as you want, we’re not going to limit it. But it is important that we are clear about the consequences of having several children. If I do that, there is a risk that I will not enter the labour market, get a worse pension and that I cannot support my children in the right way and give them the right opportunities in life,” she added.
The populist Sweden Democrats have also proposed scrapping child payments for women who have large numbers of children and are dependent on benefits in order to motivate them to join the workforce. Around one in five women born overseas living in Sweden is unemployed and the Sweden Democrats argue dependency on the benefits fuels segregation.
“If we were to remove it now, it would mean that more children would be poor. But I don’t rule out that we can phase it out going forward. We must be ready to change even these reforms, welfare systems should not lock people in their homes,” Minister Nordmark said.
While views on the subject vary among Swdish political parties, they all seem to boil down to the pervasive view that women belong in the workforce, and should not expect to be able to enjoy bringing up children. Such views have been criticised elsewhere, with hard-working mothers shunning the view that the only valuable labour is that which is paid.
Nevertheless, unemployment rates for migrant men and women are far higher than those for native-born Swedes and have been for years. Many factors have been cited for the discrepancy, such as language barriers and a lack of education.
A 2020 report claimed that as many as 43 per cent of foreign-born residents of Sweden without work lack a basic high school education compared to 18 per cent of unemployed native-born Swedes.
Swedish economics professor Johan Eklund has criticised the government following the 2015 migrant crisis saying, “I am not prepared to point the finger in any direction about whose failure it is. But as an economist, I react to the fact that there are thousands of individuals of working age who have no income whatsoever.”
“This is a burden to society. The dependency on grants is a socio-economic cost. There is also the question of what happens to individuals who do not participate in society?” he said.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.