I'm disgusted

[andrewducker]

If you are a woman, know one, or are related to one then you'll almost certainly be as sickened as I am by this article on discrimination against pregnant mothers.  But not terribly surprised by most of it.  The bit that gets to me is that an advisor to the government is saying it, and nobody is speaking out to contradict him...

Comments

[andrewducker]

But that's the point - the government steps in to tell you that you can't do that, so as to make things fairer.

[nameandnature]

Fairer for who? As Sugar points out, some employers who are prohibited from asking the question are just going to mark down any woman of childbearing age who is in a long term relationship. This'll be especially acute for smaller companies who can't afford to train someone up and then have them disappear for months. That's less fair on the women who aren't actually planning on having kids.

[andrewducker]

It's illegal for them to mark down all women of childbearing age too...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

And companies never do anything illegal ... yeah, right.

One of the problems with hidden discrimination, is that it is hidden, and so hard to prove.

If you're asked "how will you arrange your job so you can do it and raise a family/run a convention/look after your disabled mother/have your kidney dialysis/handle your depressive episodes/run for city council/be a union rep" then you can reply and the prospective employer can choose to hire you based on full disclosure. But if you are potentially hiding something that will affect the company, then only the potentially pregnant are given legal protection for the hiring process (as I understand things).

And eventually, whatever is said about fairness, it usually comes down to a human making a decision based on "feeling" (predicting how well this person will do their job, how they will work with other members of their team, how quickly they will become productive, how likely they are to leave again quickly etc.) so leaving some factors to be hidden, makes it easier for the hirer to say "oh, no, I never gave that any thought at all, I just figured she wouldn't fit in with the current team and so hired the middle class white male instead")

But I don't have any answers ... it's one of those things where there's an obvious right answer in aggregate but it gets much more difficult when you try to apply that to small individual circumstances.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I agree. I think that the laws, in this case, are largely there for normative effect - to make it clear that some things are not acceptable. And for more egregious cases to be used as a public sign to that effect.