Women 's Rights Of Women

The change in policy that allows women and men to bring their newborn children to work with them is, in a sense, just one more change in our country norms and values. At one point leaving your child with a baby sitter or at a daycare center all day was considered being a bad parent, meaning it was the norm to stay home and take care of your child yourself. Then, as divorce rates went up and more women were forced to raise their children on their own, that changed and it became the norm for women to go back to work after a set time for maternity leave. This also made sending you child to a daycare center or leaving them with a babysitter the norm since you couldn’t be there to take care of your child. With women being allowed to bring their babies into work with them, that is again changing the norms of society, specifically those having to do with the care of children. Women used to be given a hard time when they brought their children into work with them, even if it was only for a matter of minutes. Now many of them are allowed to bring their children in for a whole day, every day. This is enabling women to care for their own children and raise them in their own way with their own values, instead of entrusting those important responsibilities to someone else. Mothers are also forming a closer bond with their children in an important time in a child’s development. This will lead to a stronger bond later

The negative mind-set of employers on pregnant employees plays an important role in causing discrimination. Women’s performance ratings were seen to decline after being pregnant, from “superb” to “terrible” as shared by one victim of pregnancy discrimination. This is because they are perceived as “overly emotional, often irrational, physically limited, and less than committed to their jobs” as compared to their non-pregnant woman counterparts and are hence “less valuable and dependable.” There is also the problem of additional workload for remaining staff or the potential need to hire temporary staff to tide over the maternity leave period. To compound the issue, employers suffer uncertainty as to when the employee will return to work, or worse, the employee leaves for good after their maternity leave period. In fact, a study done shows that only 60% of women go back to work within two years of their maternity leave. It is hence unavoidable that employers, being cost sensitive, worry that all the extra cost incurred will ultimately become a meaningless loss if their pregnant employees do not return to work.

Paid maternity leave protects families from financial stress and bombardment. Per the Washington Post in the article “Defending Paid Parental leave” on September 2, 2009, “One of the side effects of the bad economy is that good ideas that sound expensive begin getting ignored. Take paid parental leave. Making sure that parents can afford to take time off to have a baby is a good idea on a number of fronts. It protects families from the choice of financial calamity or time with a newborn.”

In the 1800s women were looked upon as second-class citizens, depriving them the right to vote, run for office, to become educated or even to have any type of profession. After women were married they were not allowed to own their own property, wages/income, or sign contracts. After decades of intense political activities and rallies women were granted the right to vote in the year 1920. Women decided to take a stand as one and fight for equality amongst men and women, even if it meant dying for women in the future to one day cast a vote or run in the election.

Today there are two countries in the world that do not currently guarantee paid maternity leave for employed new mothers and/or expecting mothers, those countries are the United States and Papua New Guinea, according to the International Labour Organization, an United Nations agency, which recommends a minimum 18 week maternity leave (Rubin 2016, p.1). In recent years, the controversial issue of guaranteed maternal leave has been a prominent topic of debate amongst political activists and elites, particularly in the United States, where reform is a feasible option but has yet to be achieved. It is this absence of policy that serves to provide guaranteed maternal for all working mothers that has been linked to significant health related issues; these adverse effects not only impacts those mothers, but their children as well. Although paid maternal leave remains a controversial matter, policy reform that implements such leave is not only a feasible option in the United States, both economically and politically, it is an ethical necessity in order to facilitate the well-being of American women. Thus, in order to work toward ethical political/governmental policy that supports the well-being of women in the United States’ workforce, it is crucial that guaranteed paid maternal policy is implemented.

The concept of the FMLA was set in motion through debates over a California law mandating maternity leave for childbirth, which is discussed in greater detail in the “Government” section of this paper. After a federal district court struck down the law in 1984 as sex discrimination against men, Congressman Howard Berman, a Democrat from California, sought help from the National Partnership for Women & Families, then the Women's Legal Defense Fund, in framing a bill that would require employers to grant maternity leave (115). Instead, the National Partnership submitted the idea of a broader leave that would not only meet the needs of new mothers, but address a wider range of work/family conflicts affecting both women and men (116).

It caused the economy to go down as close as the bottom. Thus, women who made up half of the population were no longer ignored. They were able to work, and therefore, helped to improve the economy. Even though women are able to work, they are excluded from most of benefits provided by their employers since most of those jobs are part-time and temporary. Not only do they not receive benefits like permanent employees, they are easily to get fire as well. These types of jobs have little regulations for female employees. Nevertheless, female full-time workers are no better than those part-timers. The author of Under The Bus and a labor law practiced person, Fredrickson admitted that those labor laws abandoned numbers of women. They do not get either paid or unpaid family leave, or even overtime benefits. They only receive limit paid sick leave and healthcare from their jobs. Some employers even drop the working hours in order to not giving out these benefits. The worse treatment that women suffer in addition to the above disadvantages is that they are obliged to go to work immediately after they give birth to their children. This is extremely ridiculous. It shows that employers do not concern about their employees’ health at all. Imagined how tiring it is to give birth and how much the newly born children need their mothers for feeding or taking care especially in poor families that could not even afford for nannies (2015). As a result, the labor laws that established to protect employees did not include women at all. Thus women still have limit access to those benefits that they supposed to get. Forcing women to work without thinking about providing those protections or advantages would not only affect their work performance, it also affects their family

The Urban Institute published a case study that promotes the creation of national paid family leave policy in the United States. In the study, it is shown that this issue has been debated countless times in the past. George H.W. Bush even vetoed an unpaid family leave act during his presidency. This displays the struggles of enacting policy relating to this issue. The lack of a national paid family leave program in the US has left working mothers with three options: “return to work immediately after childbirth, quit employment, or take unpaid leave” (Urban Institute, 2017, p.3). The issue with these options include, loss of pay, unemployment, or the lack of parental presence in a child’s early development. Moreover, although some private companies offer paid leave, less educated and lower income mother have little access to this paid leave, which exacerbates their financial instability, keeping them in a lower societal class. This study found that not only is the current system is inadequate, but it is also inequitable, which causes financial hardships across the nation. According to the study, there has even been a 32% decrease in income after childbirth. Although this is the current situation, some states have enacted a statewide paid family leave program, which displays

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

In addition to monetary compensation, the benefits offered by varying companies are often taken into consideration when job candidates are weighing their different job options. When an organization offers excellent benefits, candidates are willing to take less in monetary compensation for the comfort provided by certain benefits. For example, extended maternity and paternity leave options, paid or partially paid, attract and retain young workers who plan to build a family in the near future. While you can’t expect every organization to offer full pay during an extended time off to raise a family, knowing that your organization will provide some kind of support is reassuring during this time where families often rely on the pay of both spouses. Other nations have already enacted legislation that requires extensive maternity leave; such as Israel who provides women with twelve months with 100 percent pay (Pynes, 2013). Currently, the United States only requires twelve weeks of unpaid leave. If certain organizations were to offer substantially better benefits, their desirability to

The women 's rights movement in the 1960s made one of the most monumental accomplishments of gaining equal opportunities in the workplace with the Equal Pay Act guaranteeing women “equal pay for equal work” as their male counterparts. Although this opened doors for women to have the same opportunities in the workforce as men it didn 't, however, address the fact that women would most likely work during pregnancy and after giving birth. During the late 1970s, the amount of women in the workforce increased and consequently it spurred on the mandate of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act banning businesses on firing or denying women jobs based on “pregnancy,

Since 1995, the amount of companies who use FMLA has dropped drastically by almost 25.5% every five years (Waldfogel, 2001). According to Anthony (2008), only 46% of employers are covered by FMLA, which leaves more than 33.6 million individuals unprotected from losing their jobs when they are on maternity leave. Even if by law the company can’t deny an individual FMLA if the employee meets both government requirements (work at least a year and a minimum of 1,250 hours with the company), the business can purposely delay when the individual receives benefits and they may even ask the individual to use their paid leave before final approval (source). The company can also delay the individual’s application by asking for a second opinion from a doctor or request a medical certification and the company is able to deny the application if the second option does not agree that the leave is necessary (U.S. Department of Labor, 2015). As a result, this increases the amount of discrimination in the workforce towards lower class employees. According to Gerstel & McGonagle (1999), women who have higher salaries and can afford to take the time off are most promising to qualify for FMLA, and therefore, are more likely to spend time with their newborn. Their study showed that middle class white mothers are most likely to benefit from FMLA

A mere 12 weeks is the amount of unpaid maternity leave promised to working mothers under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in America. Although many mothers-to-be gladly take the dozen weeks off, American families are at a disadvantage compared to other families around the globe. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee or even offer paid maternity leave for working mothers; employers decide whether to provide paid leave for mothers. In the last few decades, more women have traded their aprons for briefcases. However, working women in the United States must choose to raise families while keeping their jobs. Currently, women in the United States must choose between their kids or their career. Mothers who decide to have families must stay at home with a new baby with no guarantee of a paycheck. New mothers should be guaranteed six months of fully paid maternity leave in the United States because they need to restore their health, paid leave helps the economy, and it promotes better health of the baby.

Some economists and business owners are concerned on implementing paid maternity leave to other states because of the extra cost it can bring to the government, the employee, and the company itself. Economists argue that even though the states that do provide paid maternity leave is completed through higher taxes and government aid, it is not enough as the cost to companies is still very large, especially for small businesses. Small companies might not be able to afford this additional cost and as a result, many small businesses do not offer paid leave because of the additional expense of hiring and training a new employee during the absence (Sadler, n.d.). Adding this expense can make it more difficult to hire more employees in the future.

Despite the advantages of paid parental leave, the United States trails behind other developed countries in guaranteeing these options. In fact, America is currently “one of the only two nations (the other being Papua New Guinea) that do not guarantee paid maternity leave to new mothers” (Baum II and Ruhm 333). Last year, according to the Pew Research Center, only fourteen percent of workers had access to paid family leave (Desilver). Instead of choosing to extend paid leave for their employees, many American businesses opt to offer unpaid family leave that is available to almost ninety