andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2008-04-23 05:00 pm
andrewducker) wrote2008-04-23 05:00 pm
I'm disgusted
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...
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With pregnancy, this is a female-only thing. That alone makes the playing field instantly unbalanced. Since that's the starting point, it makes every other comparison moot, with the sole exception that you can choose to look at every male candidate from age 16 to 99 as having the potential to become a father to a child at any point. Most employers don't do that, though, from what I can gather.
The discrimination is based on a perception of biology. It strips away the possibility that some women *can* work through their pregnancies, some will want to come back to work asap, etc. It discriminates against all women of child-bearing age, even if they have no intention (or even the ability - don't forget many are infertile) to have a child, simply because they are the part of the species that is supposed to handle that particular job.
In short, it's wrong. It's damaging to society as a whole. I honestly believe there are more benefits to an employer who is willing to work with female employees around the issue of childcare and pregnancy than there are disincentives.
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Having said that,
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Can you assume that every person suitable to be hired won't at some point fall ill and need significant time off work? Can you assume that every person won't require leave for family or compassionate reasons, or that their situation won't change where something happens that requires more flexibility with their position?
It's tempting to believe that in an interview you can gauge all these things and come out with an employee that you can depend on, rain or shine, male or female. I just think that's the wrong attitude to take with the job interview process. Shit happens, people change, etc. To assume that a woman is going to be an unstable employee because she may become pregnant or may have a child is to undermine everything else that the woman may bring to the table: experience, hard work, loyalty, etc.
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The original post was about Alan Sugar saying that he should be free to ask if a woman plans to become pregnant. My devil's advocate position is "Well, why shouldn't he be allowed to discriminate against a women who is definitely planning to become pregnant?" not "Why shouldn't he be allowed to discriminate against a woman who might, by virtue of her sex, become pregnant?"
This isn't a "shit may happen" question, so much as a "well, shit definitely is going to happen. Now, is it actually right to be able to consider that in hiring?"
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"These data raise two alternative explanations. One explanation is that job performance actually increases during pregnancy and the ratings are accurate representations of work performance. A woman may overcompensate for her pregnant condition by working harder in an attempt to assuage any potential concerns by co-workers that her performance will decrease and result in an increased workload for them. Additionally, since a pregnant employee will eventually need to take a medical leave, she may be highly motivated to perform so that her contribution will be missed. In this way, she may demonstrate commitment to the organization and may believe it is more likely that she will be positively received upon her return from maternity leave.
The second explanation is that a leniency effect is at work. Supervisors may "overcompensate" for the work performance of pregnant subordinates in an effort to "assist" a pregnant employee. Both explanations are legitimate; thus, future research should investigate the bases for these observed differences."
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Very cool. I suspected that the *actual* results might not correspond with the intuited ones. Thanks.
What about post-childbirth, I wonder?
Also - thanks for the scholar.google.com link. Believe it or not, I'd not heard of it.
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Depending on the access you can get through scholar.google.com (I'm using Edinburgh Uni's proxy service so I get access to most of the e-journals), you can do all kinds of research on your questions. Sometimes you may only get access to the abstracts though, which is better than nothing I suppose.
There is a lot of information kicking around about the effects of pregnancy in the workplace, almost all of it revolving around the perceptions made about pregnant employees. Very little of it seems to correspond to what actually occurs with pregnant employees. This may be because pregnancies vary from person to person (and a woman who had an 'easy' pregnancy may find herself with a difficult one at another point in time ), so the data is difficult to assess.
Also, I wonder about whether women are willing to be honest about how pregnancy affects their ability to do their jobs. Maybe even just admitting, in a small way, that it could make things harder, is just not allowed anymore. We're taught that we can have it all - a career and a family - so we should just suck up the pain and get on with it, right? Makes me wonder.
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At the end of the day, the question is whether or not a pregnancy is going to prevent someone from being able to do their job well. As I said, this varies from woman to woman, from pregnancy to pregnancy. But pregnancy is only a short amount of time. The attitudes about the ability of a pregnant woman to perform well in the workplace are the problem first, in my mind, and the pregnancy symptoms / childcare juggling are firmly second.
In my experience, parents are willing to do absolutely everything they can to provide for their children. That means getting a good job and keeping it, come hell or high water. To me, that means having children becomes an incentive for doing well at a job, making family-oriented employees attractive for employers.
The more 'masculine' jobscenes are so much more difficult to convince because the very notion of femininity is an affront to the masculine battlefield. There's some studies about how some jobs will be more affected by pregnancy than others, for example a pregnant banking officer will receive less prejudice than a pregnant lawyer working in the City.
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Hal G. Gueutal, Joan Luciano and Carole A. Michaels. 1995. "Pregnancy in the workplace: Does pregnancy affect performance appraisal ratings?" Journal of Business and Psychology, Volume 10, Number 2, December, 1995, 155-167.
Abstract:
Archival data were collected to examine bias effects in performance evaluation related to employee pregnancy. Prior survey research has suggested that many supervisors and co-workers hold negative views of pregnant employees. Performance appraisal ratings were collected before, during, and after pregnancy for employees taking maternity leave over a four year time frame. In addition, data was also collected from randomly selected control subjects, which were matched on job title and observation period. Contrary to expectations, performance appraisal ratings were found to increase during pregnancy when compared to before ratings and control group ratings. Potential explanations as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.
From page 164 of the study: "The results of this study are surprising in light of previous laboratory studies and field surveys. A great deal of discussion and concern has focused on the various ways women are discriminated against in the workplace. Indeed, the "glass ceiling" is sometimes cited as resulting from the discontinuity in work history associated with child bearing.
Since career progression is often based on performance evaluation, it is likely that discrimination would be found in these ratings. These data suggest otherwise. Both the within-subjects and between-subjects test were consistent and showed no discrimination against pregnant women. These results indicate that, at least in this organization, (1) pregnant
employees were rated as significantly better performers than non-pregnant employees, and (2) pregnant employees are rated higher when compared to their immediate past performance evaluation. This suggests that pregnancy and child bearing may not be a career negative.
When comparing the before pregnancy with the after pregnancy ratings, while they were not significantly different, the observed difference was in the direction of more positive ratings. However, it is possible that the after pregnancy rating is more positive than the before pregnancy rating because in some cases, it may have reflected both performance during
and after pregnancy. That is, there may have been a "spill-over" effect in the after ratings, as the supervisor might be reflecting on performance during pregnancy in making ratings of an employee recently returned from maternity leave. In this organization at least, child bearing does not appear to be negatively affect performance appraisal ratings. This finding does not appear to support the argument that maternity leave and child bearing have immediate negative career impacts."
(I'll continue in another post due to word count limit)