Rethinking the Spanish Constitution: a look at the duty to work and the right to work

Abstract

Forty years have passed since the Spanish Constitution was approved and twenty-three years since Spain ratified the Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995). The latter entailed a commitment to incorporate the principle of gender mainstreaming in all the regulatory processes —elaboration, interpretation and application of standards— and in all public policies and this very same date should mark a before and after in both legal and political matters. This binding commitment compels to review the Constitution and incorporate the gender perspective in a main and transversal way, from the Preamble (where it would be shielded) to its operative part. This work focuses especially on article 35 to the recognition of the duty and the right to work, given that challenges such as the gender wage gap, the need to rebalance work, family and personal life and the need to combat all forms of violence against women, stand among the greatest ones of the XXI century.

Summary:
1. A review of The Constitution of 1978 in the face of the new international juridical impulses. 2. European and national protection based on gender: a look at the Right to Work. 3. The persistence of the gender gap and the urgency of a constitutional response. 4. Some concluding proposals and of legal and political improvement.