In case you aren’t aware of it, pregnancy discrimination happens. This post seeks to illuminate exactly what pregnancy discrimination is and how bad it is, as well as to help business owners eliminate it. To access the best online applicant tracking system for small business hiring, click here to use Recruiteze. We make online recruiting and hiring easy.
To Prevent Pregnancy Discrimination, You First Have to Realize That it Exists
What is Pregnancy Discrimination?
First, we need to discuss what pregnancy discrimination is? It is any time that a woman’s ability to work is stifled at the hands of another because of her pregnancy. This can occur during her attempts to become pregnant, for instance if she expresses a desire for kids or is receiving treatments to become pregnant, while pregnant, and shortly after having given birth. Discrimination includes degrading language, firing, refusal to hire, withholding of promotions or raises, refusal to meet reasonable requests for accommodation, and more.
How Often Does Pregnancy Discrimination Occur?
Frighteningly often, and incongruously so in light of all the attempts companies make to reach gender equality and even to try to serve mothers and fathers with family leave and in-office daycares.
The New York Times shared a quote from Professor Joan C. Williams at University of California Hastings College of Law, “Some women hit the maternal wall long before the glass ceiling.”
Despite policies to end gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination not only continues, it is growing. The New York Times also reported that, in 2017, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “received 3,184 pregnancy discrimination complaints, about twice as many as in 1992, when it began keeping electronic records.” The number of incidents is probably actually much higher because it is common for women to not report incidents of pregnancy discrimination because they don’t realize there is action to be taken regarding what happened to them, it seems too difficult to actually receive help, or they are afraid of retaliation.
Pregnancy discrimination can happen anywhere, from labor jobs paying minimum wage to executive positions in powerful, well-thought-of companies. Sometimes the discrimination is blatant and physically dangerous, while at other times it is more subtle, harder to prove, but still very damaging. It is also not always perpetrated by men; women discriminate against other women. Fathers can also be discriminated against because of extra demands that may be put on him because of a pregnant partner or a new baby.
Examples of Pregnancy Discrimination
Many women in physically demanding jobs ask for a change in job duties at some point during their pregnancy. They may need assistance with one task, to be excused from one task, or ask for a different type of role altogether, for instance a police officer asking for desk assignment, someone who typically unloads a truck asking to stock shelves, or someone who works around strong smells asking for a job without those smells.
Unfortunately, many managers and employers simply refuse to make a change, sometimes even when the woman brings a doctor’s note stating the necessity of the change.
It is also quite common for women to be out of the running for promotions and raises. They just keep getting overlooked mysteriously, promotions go to other people with no obvious explanation.
Many women are demoted or fired or run out of the workplace because the conditions are so intolerable. Her wishes being ignored, being asked to do something that’s dangerous, being ostracized, and being openly degraded are all ways that women are pretty much forced to quit.
The New York Times article highlighted examples:
A senior employee at Glencore, Erin Murphy, got pregnant with her first child and was told outright that it would “definitely plateau” her career. When she became pregnant a second time, she asked her employer about potential career moves and he replied, “You’re old and having babies so there’s nowhere for you to go.”
Rachel Mountis was an award-winning salesperson at Merck when she became pregnant. She had loyal clients and would not be able to communicate with them during her “several week” maternity leave. She was laid off with a “handful” of other employees in a downsizing. After having the baby, she was hired back to a job that amounted to a demotion with less bonus potential, and when she got pregnant with her second child, she was demoted again. She resigned and ended up working for a less prestigious company and says she’s still trying to regain her momentum. “On paper, I was the same professional that I was nine months earlier,” she said about having been laid off.
When she got pregnant, Otisha Woolbright had a job at Walmart that involved repeatedly lifting 50 pound trays. At 3 months, she suffered bleeding and was told at the emergency room that she might miscarry. She took a doctor’s note to her employer and asked if she could be switched to a light duty job, but they refused. She couldn’t quit because she needed the money and knew no one would hire her while she was pregnant, so she continued working and ended up in pain and back in the hospital.
Candis Riggins, also working at Walmart, had a job scrubbing toilets when she was pregnant where the cleaning chemicals made her nauseated. She asked to be given another job and was refused, so she continued to work though she had to pause periodically to vomit. When it was discovered that the chemicals were making her sick and threatening her and her baby, her employers finally switched her to another cleaning job that was no better. She began missing work and was fired.
The Spiggle law firm gave an example where an administrative worker, Marlena Santana, was treated in a hostile manner when she told her employers about her pregnancy. She was removed from her usual work and given “demeaning” tasks that included “filling water bottles, getting snacks and soda from a store, and spending 10 days redacting and changing medical records instead of shredding them.” They cut her work in half and hired someone else to do the work she had previously been doing. They eventually fired her without a plausible explanation.