Thing to Ponder: Pregnant Women in the Workforce

Lowbacca_1977 · Mar 25, 2011

anakinfansince1983 said:

Maybe employers should start asking potential recruits when was the last time they ate greasy high-cholesterol food...
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Well, there's already companies that question if someone's a smoker, and it's not unfamiliar that weight can play a role in not getting a job or not getting promotions. Heck, New Zealand restricts immigration based on it. So, I mean, if your logic is the two are similar, and we ARE already doing the latter, then doesn't that justify being hesitant to hire women under your logic?

chibiangi · Mar 25, 2011

Darth_Yuthura said:

chibiangi said:

Not hiring me because I might get pregnant is 100% gender discrimination and I do not really understand how it can be interpreted as anything else.
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Alright, what's the difference between favorability and discrimination? If you have multiple people aiming for the same position, you'll chose the one who best fits with the position. If you've got a person with a mental condition who outwardly appears threatening(like one person I know) and applying for a position that involves working with other people... would you really be discriminating if you favor another person who's just as qualified? It could be argued that the person's disability in itself many not hinder his ability to work, but it could impact how the others are able to work with him. Now this person I'm thinking of happens to be very bright, seemingly having a photographic memory, but I can say that his mannerisms make him difficult to be around. His behaviors are also not conducive for working with others.

This is favorability.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/03/24/dnt.pregnant.cop.fired.WAGT?hpt=T2

This is outright discrimination, and fits perfectly with the topic.
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You are saying that men should be hired over women because of the chance they might get pregnant. That is discrimination and it is against the law.

Valairy Scot · Mar 25, 2011

It so happens that I, a female, was on paid leave (sick pay ) for a week with 1/2 day off every week since (4 weeks) due to a broken wrist incurred sking (okay, falling ).

We're a fairly small office - jury duty, family leave, sick leave,snow days, etc. tend to interfere from time to time and affect our ability to serve our customers.

Under the citeria some have put forth (and I exclude the time sensitive job where hiring a pregnant female would clearly interfere with the job responsibities) should I have not been hired if an equally qualified male had applied because I hike, ski and bike? No? But yes if there was that possibility I might get married (or not) and get pregnant?

I believe Federal paid maternity leave is now legally "family leave" for businesses of 25(?) employees or larger, so it's not "months" of paid leave nor it is strictly for "women to have babies."

So is this discussion more or less over a longer term paid leave?

anakinfansince1983 · Mar 26, 2011

Lowbacca_1977 said:

anakinfansince1983 said:

Maybe employers should start asking potential recruits when was the last time they ate greasy high-cholesterol food...
Click to expand...

Well, there's already companies that question if someone's a smoker, and it's not unfamiliar that weight can play a role in not getting a job or not getting promotions. Heck, New Zealand restricts immigration based on it. So, I mean, if your logic is the two are similar, and we ARE already doing the latter, then doesn't that justify being hesitant to hire women under your logic?
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I would place not hiring someone based on weight as discrimination and just as wrong as not hiring someone based on gender, unless the job is modeling "skinny clothes," in which case, we wouldn't hire a woman to model men's clothes either.

I also would think that questioning whether or not someone is a smoker would have more to do with their wanting extra smoke breaks than about whether they were going to be out of work for any reason. Plus smoking is a choice at least to some extent. (And yes, I know it's a habit, I used to do it.) Being born with two X chromosomes isn't a choice. I would place weight as much more of a choice than gender, although genetics do play a factor in weight.

And we could turn this around, as Valairy_Scot mentioned--do we not hire someone who is athletic because the person might get injured?

That's the issue here, the idea that a person should not get hired for X Y or Z reason because the person might, at some point in the future, need to take time off. We're talking about not hiring females of childbearing age because she might, at some point in the future, get pregnant. We're not even talking about refusing to hire someone who is already pregnant. And we're also not talking about refusing to hire someone who isn't unhealthy because that person would cause company insurance premiums to rise (a concept I think is worth discussing but in another topic). That's the New Zealand immigration issue, I think Canada has a similar policy of asking potential immigrants about health problems.

chibiangi · Mar 26, 2011

The only factors that should be considered for employment are an applicant's qualifications such as their educational background, certificates/certifications, necessary licensing, past job experience and past criminal history. Gender discrimination is illegal yet it still happens and apparently, is still considered perfectly acceptable to some. I do not think the answer to women needing leave to give birth is to not hire women. The answer is to support the birth process by supporting both men and women in their child rearing. If we do not have children, we do not have a replacement generation of workers (unless you favor immigration as the replacement, which I certainly do not).

Time said:

One of the more intriguing explanations for the pesky and persistent gender gap in wages is that becoming a mother tends to depress a woman's ability to earn, while becoming a father has the opposite effect, especially among white-collar workers.
Various explanations have been offered to explain the daddy bonus. It may be that fatherhood has a tendency to focus the mind on providing, so guys work longer hours. It's also possible that men who are fathers are considered to be more responsible and promotable, or conversely, that they don't become fathers until they're earning the big bucks. It may be that bosses feel sympathy for fathers because they know how damnably expensive children are. Or it may simply be that dads would rather stay at the office, where everybody behaves like a grown up, than go home to the squirminess and bodily fluid-filled drudgery of family life.

But Michelle Budig, associate professor of sociology, and Melissa Hodges a Ph.D. candidate, both at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, found that the paternal payday persisted, even when they adjusted for years of service or hours spent at work. In other words, the salary difference was not because the guys worked harder or were more experienced. It was because they were fathers. (More on TIME.com: The Scoop on Raising a Baby, From Two Mom Docs)
In a study published in December's Gender & Society, the two authors crunch numbers from the National Longitundinal Survey of Youth to find that while fathers of all racial or ethnic groups get a salary bump, not everybody gets the same raise.

For a start the men have to be married: there's no baby-daddy bonus. Also it helps if they're white, college-educated professionals or managers. "Married, white fathers receive a bonus in annual earnings of 8.3%, or roughly $2, 214, while married African American fathers get a bonus of 7.3% or $1,538," says Hodges. "Married Latinos receive a 9.2% bonus, which amounts to roughly $2,207."

Within racial and ethnic groups there were some interesting further differences. Latinos got a bigger bump if they had a traditional family structure, where the wife did not work outside the home. This made no difference in white or black households. Whites and Latinos with a higher level of education got a bigger bump, while education had no effect on the size of African American's daddy bonus.

And of course, in the way of things, the men in the most socially advantaged positions to begin with, college-educated, in managerial jobs in professional occupations, were the chief beneficiaries.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/05/the-daddy-bonus-which-fathers-get-paid-more-at-work/#ixzz1Hj3hyTAd
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Thing to Ponder: Pregnant Women in the Workforce

Lowbacca_1977 Chosen One

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