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

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

Doing a quick search on scholar.google.com yielded the following:

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)