Pregnancy Discrimination Cases

The significance of Lorena Week’s sex discrimination case was that women can use the legal system to achieve for equality. Week’s case led the National Origination for Women to challenge discriminatory laws. Lorena weeks was a single mother of three children living in Wadley, Georgia. She worked as a telephone operator for many years at the Southern Bell Company. As a single mother, Weeks struggled to provide for her family on her low wages. When the position of Switchman opened, Weeks applied for the position. The switchman job had higher wages and since weeks had been with the company for many years she had seniority rights for the position. When Weeks confronted the company, they said the position was reserved for men and didn’t consider

According to the website Oyez ,The argument that pregnant workers like “most favored nation” status, was considered by the court. The court held that Congress did not mean to create that status for pregnant employees and also rejected United Parcel Service view that the PDA (Pregnancy Discrimination Act) simply describes gender discrimination to include pregnancy discrimination. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act would fail to carry out one of its main purposes: to overturn precedent that rejected a Title VII challenge to a company plan that provided non-occupational sickness and accident benefits to all employees, but no disability-benefits payments for pregnancy-caused absences, stated by the

The laws seem to be effective, thousands of women a year who are pregnant or new mothers file complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Federal agency that deals with job discrimination.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed by Congress in 1978 as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There are two Supreme Court cases that were influential in demonstrating a need for the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that excluding pregnancy related disabilities from disability insurance in California did not violate equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of Title VII, as the list of exclusions also included conditions that affected both men and women . The ruling of Gedulig v. Aiello was that this exclusion did not count as sex discrimination even though the exclusion of pregnancy related disabilities is facially discriminatory to the female sex. The GE v. Gilbert case in 1976 involved

In my opinion Mothers Work needs to seriously and immediately address the issue. They needed to send an immediate announcement to all management that there will be diversity training. They needed to make public a flex schedule that is beneficial to pregnant employees and show that they support their employees. While their target audience may be their customers I will always love a quote from Richard Branson that I believes sums up who your audience should always be “take care of you employees and they will take care of your

In a precedent-setting decision in 2000, the state Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a superior court ruling in Carmichael Vs. Wynn & Wynn noting in the text that "discriminatory animus was a factor in the decision not to hire a pregnant woman."

Pregnancy discrimination is still occurring today. The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) received 6,196 charges of pregnancy-based discrimination in 2009. This is a significant increase

Private schools should have the right to make their own rules to help their students and better their school. Policies and rules set in place by the private school administration stating that pregnant or parenting students must follow different rules than regular students are violating the students’ rights to education. Pregnant and parenting students who are asked to leave private schools have no way of fighting for their rights because Title IX does not apply to privately funded schools. Pregnancy discrimination in schools is a violation of girls’ rights as women, considering only girls can become pregnant. This country has fought for equal rights for women for many years. There have been many Supreme Court cases revolving around discriminating against women. In 1965, Weeks v. Southern Bell won women the fight against labor laws and regulations about the hours and conditions that women can work and opened many jobs that were previously only available to males (Writing Women Back Into History). In the 1969 case of Bowe v. Colgate-Palmolive Company, women meeting the physical won the right to work in jobs that only men could work (Writing Women Back Into History). In Pittsburgh Press v. Pittsburgh Commission on human Relations of 1973, Supreme Court ruled against

It has been argued that maternity leave is not only harmful to business but also to women themselves, and that it can be a burden on businesses so they may think twice about employing women. (7) Where leave is given, whether paid or unpaid, businesses have to fill the position vacated by the parents and this in itself creates additional work and cost for employers who have to pay for job advertisements, background checks and time for interviews. They are also faced with the cost of training the temporary

Within the Civil Right act was a section entitled Title VII which was created specifically to deal with matters of employment. Title VII’s objective is to prevent discrimination based upon a person’s color, national origin, gender, and religion in regards to all aspects of employment. This protection begins with the initial stages of hiring and training employees and extends up to promotions and dismissals of an employees. If a person belonged to one of the groups outlined by Title VII they became classified as a member of a protected class. (Bohlander and Snell, 101) With the establishment of sex as a protected class the foundation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act had been laid but it would take fourteen years before pregnancy itself would become protected.

Sex-based wage discrimination is against the law, as is stated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The same Act prohibits pregnancy discrimination and states that employers cannot refuse to employ a woman because of pregnancy or terminate her, force her to go on leave at an arbitrary point during pregnancy or penalize her because of pregnancy in reinstatement rights credit for previous service, and accumulated seniority. Family responsibilities typically still fall more heavily on women, and neither society nor employers have found good ways to mesh those with job demands. Employers see parental leaves as a lack of commitment to the job and therefore more likely not to give promotions to the female workers (Kleiner & Kuta, 2001:45-47). Women can get equal treatment, but mostly when they behave like traditional men and leave the primary family responsibilities at home. Many women choose to take time off or to work part-time to be with their children rather than stay on the job and mainly because of lack of day care and flexible job options (Kleiner & Kuta, 2001:45-47). Some women drop out of work force for as long as two or three years,

A woman is eligible for “Maternity leave” if, “She is absent from the employment for a period not exceeding eight weeks for the purpose of giving birth; or if she gives her employer at least two weeks of notice of her anticipated date of departure and intention to return.” (“Maternity Leave Act”, 2007) Thanks to these numerous regulations and rights, in these specific circumstances the employees have to be treated fairly, and cannot be discriminated. There are legal penalties when employees are not treated

Congress amended Title VII in 1978 by passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and made it clear that discrimination based on pregnancy is unlawful sex discrimination. This legislation reversed the Supreme Court's Gilbert decision in 1976. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 which overruled several Supreme Court decisions rendered in the 1980s that had made it more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail in their employment discrimination suits and to recover fees and costs when they won their lawsuits (www.eeoc.gov). The amendment stated that parties can request jury trials and those successful plaintiffs can recover compensatory and punitive damages in employment discrimination cases. This amendment has

A second key issue is the hiring process. Many companies prefer to hire men over women for a positionregardless of their education or experience. Some reasons this may be is because most females have to balance work and family duties which may be a huge barrier in helping advancement in an organization, so an employer may prefer to hire a man who will not come with the baggage of children or the issue of balancing work and family duties. During an interview some women are not hired because they cannot be taken seriously because some may wear too much make-up or their pants suit or skirt may be too tight. Women that are pregnant are also sometimes not considered for a position because the manager may worry about the women wanting time off work on maternity leave. This may not be a direct financial concern about paying women while on maternity leave. It's more about the cost of replacing and training someone to cover their role while they are off.

Besides the previous reasons stated, one of the most common problems for women in the workplace is being discriminated against due to pregnancy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has stated seeing a 65 percent increase in complaints about discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace between 1992 and 2007 (Chaney, 2008). Example of pregnancy discrimination are refusing to hire a pregnant woman, firing or demoting a pregnant women, denying a woman the same or similar job when she returns, or treating a pregnant employee differently than other temporarily disabled employees. Many women get laid off and even fired from their jobs because they get pregnant. Often male bosses will give excuses for these situations saying that the woman is unable to do their job or that their missing attendance will be a problem due to their pregnancy. Some bosses simply give the reason that women will not be as interested in their job once the child is born, which is an outrageous assumption to make.