The Rap on Pregnancy Discrimination
What does pregnancy do to your chances of success at work? If you are Amy Poehler, it seems not to hurt a bit. One week before giving birth she had us howling while she performed her Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-palin-rap/773781/
OK, Amy Poehler is a super-talented, hilarious woman who apparently has an unending stock of energy. For the rest of us mere mortals, it doesn’t always go so smoothly. I’m not just talking about morning sickness and aching backs.
A study released last week indicates that discrimination against pregnant workers persists thirty years after the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The PDA makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee (or job applicant) on the basis of pregnancy. The law is clear, but putting it into practice has not gone so smoothly.
The National Partnership for Women and Families study, released on October 29, 2008, analyzed data of claims of pregnancy discrimination from 1996 through 2005, and found a steady increase in claims during that period. Here’s a link:
http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=newsroom_pr_PressRelease_081029
The National Partnership found that overall claims of pregnancy discrimination had risen more than 25%, and that the rise was particularly sharp for women of color. New Jersey was cited as one state with a particularly sharp rise, over 50%. The rise in claims was much greater than the increase of women in the workforce, so it could not be explained merely by a larger number of pregnant workers.
Interestingly, women working in fields traditionally dominated by female workers are not insulated from discrimination. In fact, last January, a Philadelphia-based retailer specializing in maternity clothing paid $375,000 to settle a claim brought by the EEOC after accusations that it discriminated against pregnant workers! Here’s that link:
http://www.eeoc.gov/press/1-8-07.html
Does the data found by the National Partnership show that there is actually more discrimination than there was 25 years ago, or does it show greater awareness of anti-discrimination laws by employees, who are now more willing to bring claims? It is hard to say for sure. At the least, it seems to show that bias persists even so many years after the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
Numerous studies have shown that pregnant workers are perceived as less committed to their jobs than non-pregnant workers. In one particularly interesting study, women wore a “pregnancy prosthesis” during job interviews and while shopping. The study concluded that the pregnant job applicants were subjected to hostility, while the pregnant shoppers were given extra positive attention. Here’s a link for that study:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=19281502
This study seems to show what many of us sense intuitively. The problem isn’t so much malevolence toward pregnant women in the abstract (the way there might be toward some racial or religious minorities). The problem comes with the intersection of motherhood and work. Thus, bias against someone who is pregnant is often couched in “benevolent” terms. The National Partnership study cited the likelihood that male co-workers will believe that a pregnant woman ought to prioritize family over career.
There is also the reality that employers fear that a pregnant employee will cost money. Employers worry about coverage during maternity leave, or that the pregnant worker will not have the energy or ability to keep working at full force. In a tight economy, those worries are more likely to express themselves in discrimination against the pregnant worker. Understandable? Maybe. Legal? Absolutely not.
Bias against pregnant workers may seem more socially acceptable than stereotyping on racial or religious grounds, but it is still illegal. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act forbids taking a job action on stereotyped perceptions about the commitment or skills of a pregnant worker.