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Pregnancy and discrimination in the workplace

  • poll: Have you faced pregnancy discrimination in the workplace?
    Yes : (22 votes)
    22 %
    No, and I'm in a male-dominated profession : (18 votes)
    18 %
    No, and my profession is not male-dominated : (41 votes)
    42 %
    Not sure, but I think pregnancy may have impacted my employer's perception of my work : (13 votes)
    13 %
    Kittens : (4 votes)
    4 %
  1. brownie

    grapefruit / 4110 posts

    Yes and I believe it is more pervasive than we want to believe. I have had one bad and one good situation.

    The bad because it came up first. I had to do Ivf with my son. As if that wasn't a hard enough situation my boss was horrid during this time. To the point I was crying outside on the phone telling my husband that we may have to stop midcycle. It worked and I went from being awesome to someone who couldn't code at all and came in late and all sorts of other things. I got a bad review and fought it on the facts without touching that it was pregnancy discrimination. All I wanted was a new supervisor and they just couldn't make that happen for some reason. I found a new job when my son was 9 months old. I went from Doing software to teaching software.

    Then with my daughter I had two part time jobs. I worked until I went into labor at both and came back to my teaching job when she was 5 days old (1 hour a day job). I interviewed for a full time position at 36 weeks pregnant. I got the position. I couldn't believe it because I was obviously pregnant. And it has turned out well. I have missed two days of work this year. Once for baby in the hospital and once for myself being sick.

    I do still have trust issues and trams around the first experience. I highly recommend both the documentary "code debugging the gender gap" and the website elephant in the valley. They are eye opening for women in software and non traditional roles as well.

  2. skipra

    pomegranate / 3350 posts

    I SAH now but my first pregnancy absolutely did not affect my work. I was given a promotion while pregnant and my boss bent over backward trying to get me to come back after LO1 was born.

  3. macintosh

    pear / 1750 posts

    I am very lucky to work for a small company with a very generous, progressive owner. I was promoted during pregnancy and given a raise shortly after I came back from leave. I only took 6 weeks, but I was fully paid and I am allowed to WAH 4 days/week.

    That said, I am in the male-dominated tech industry and I have experienced a ton of sexism during my career. I have been subjected to sexual harassment, unequal pay, unfair treatment (by men and women). It's extremely frustrating. Even my boss, who is awesome, recently doubted if I could install something that required a tall ladder

  4. Mrs.KMM

    grapefruit / 4355 posts

    No - I worked in academic research and I was given more responsibility and a raise while I was pregnant. And my boss was super easy going with working our experiments around my doctors appointments.

    I chose to SAH but my boss converted a side lab space into a pumping room for another employee (the official pumping room was in another building and not convenient). And he was more than willing to work out a part-time or flexible schedule with me had I wanted to return post baby.

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