Heavy Lifting: Pregnant Women are Forced to Carry an Extra Load in the Workforce [View all]

[Neoma]

In the 1970s, after it became illegal to discriminate based on race, some employers responded by imposing high school education requirements for blue-collar jobs. Today, employers who want to keep women out of "men's jobs" do something similar: they wait until workers get pregnant, and then deny them "light duty," like desk work for a police officer, for example, or a transfer from the warehouse to the phone bank, making them unable to perform their jobs.

Discrimination against pregnant women is finally beginning to get the national attention it deserves. Last week, I and others urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to issue guidance to clarify the rights of pregnant women at work. Such guidance is sorely needed. An op-ed by Dina Bakst published a few weeks ago in the New York Times noted that "thousands of pregnant women are pushed out of jobs that they are perfectly capable of performing -- either put on unpaid leave or simply fired -- when they request an accommodation to help maintain a healthy pregnancy." The stories from some of the growing number of cases that have been filed in the last several years speak for themselves.

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