Pregnancy/maternity discrimination

[Bryn]

All forms are discrimination are bad and degrading, but here's one that seems to be a new thing... people being slighted for being pregnant or have children, more so against females. This is part of the official etiquette at a place I go to for volunteering but I actually knew of it before from Wikipedia one day.

It makes me wonder how girls and women are prejudiced based on that... well in the workplace, employers would refuse to take on anyone that they think has a more likely chance to bear children or, lay off anyone for it especially when they think them becoming a parent would cause them to lose a valued employee. This can also happen for male workers who desire to be fathers I believe.

Let's talk about it.

 

[Jason76]

Anywhere where the fetus could be possibly damaged should be off-limits.

 

[Azareal]

It's not particularly surprising from a business perspective as it causes large losses and upsets with people vanishing for long periods of time and still getting paid in a lot of cases (although, only for a fraction of the overall duration, still a number of months).

Not to mention, that you have to arrange for replacements to come in, ones you have the full intention of laying off once the person is back from the maternity leave, the whole thing is a mess.

This is one of those things where it's extremely unfortunate when people get disadvantaged due to it, but we can't pretend that it is just a matter of popping out for six months, popping back in, and everything is all A-OK.

As for why men are alright? They aren't entitled to long leaves, this is due to the societal expectations that women are the ones who stay away taking care of kids and what-not. There are probably other factors too, but I don't consider myself an expert in this field.