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]

Well, can you ask someone if they have a history of mental health problems? I don't think you can. But if you could, then you'd start assessing that person based on that history, wondering if you're going to have to sign them off in the future for paid sick leave, right?

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.