Pregnant women still face job bias

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post

Kristian Denny Todd found out she was pregnant with her first child in the fall of 2003 — about the same time she was interviewing for a new job.

Todd faced a dilemma many women face: how to navigate a job search when motherhood, plus a need for maternity leave, is imminent.

Further complicating Todd's situation was that her prospective job was with a political consulting firm, and her baby was due in May 2004, just as the presidential election season would be heating up.

Todd decided the fair thing was to be upfront. "It was going to be a big year for them. I thought I should be very honest about the time I needed for leave," she said.

Her strategy worked well. When she felt a job offer was probable, on her third or fourth round of interviews, she told interviewers of her pregnancy and her due date. She hoped for seven weeks of maternity leave, she told them, and said she would be around for most of the "crunch time." She was hired a week later.

By comparison, a headhunting firm Todd had been interviewing with said it wanted someone who was "able to hit the ground running," Todd said.

Although it's illegal to discriminate based on pregnancy, there are still many cases of women fired or not hired for positions because of pending motherhood.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received thousands of charges of pregnancy-based discrimination in fiscal 2003.

The commission resolved 4,847 charges and recovered $12.4 million in monetary benefits for the charging parties that year.

"For highly skilled women, it is changing," said Jodi Grant, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, formerly the Women's Legal Defense Fund. "But for a lot of women, there is still discrimination out there."

The Family and Medical Leave Act allows 12 weeks of unpaid leave for employees who have been with an employer of 50 or more people for at least a year.

Some states have more generous laws that trump the federal law.

Several years ago, Maria Cameron discovered she was pregnant the same day she learned she would have an interview with the Commerce Department.

The pregnancy was so new she wanted to wait before telling anyone, let alone a prospective employer.

"I was very excited about starting a new job. It was a great opportunity," she said. "But the baby was really important. Two things you really want are happening all at the same time."

Her friends recommended she tell her boss later in the pregnancy. But "if I waited, then I would feel like I was hiding something," she said. So on her second day of work, in May, she told her boss that her baby was due in October. She took 14 weeks of maternity leave, most of it unpaid because she hadn't earned more paid time off.

Many women have no leave time when they start a new job. Therefore, some who are pregnant and job searching find it necessary to reveal a pregnancy so they can negotiate maternity leave along with salary and benefits.

Such was the case with Jennifer Sweeney when a friend she had worked with at a D.C.-based advocacy organization for working women called her about a job opening as a lobbyist. Such an organization would seem the perfect place for a pregnant woman to find a job. Still, when Sweeney interviewed at four months, she progressed carefully.

Sweeney decided to wait until she was offered a job, then tell the organization about her need for maternity leave. If her prospective hirers accepted, great. If not, she would stay at her current position.

When Sweeney was offered the job, she explained her situation to the chief executive and said she "wanted to make this a situation that will be a win-win for both of us." She suggested six weeks of leave. The chief executive, who had children himself, told her she'd need at least that much time to recover.

He was right. Sweeney took 12 weeks, working 10 hours a week from home during the final six weeks of leave.

"It was good that I didn't tell them (about the pregnancy) until they offered me a job, but when I did tell them I didn't just accept," she said. She wanted to make sure the organization wanted her enough that she could still have what she needed. "I didn't want to go someplace that would punish me for being pregnant."