Daphne Delvaux, an attorney who specializes in workplace discrimination cases brought by moms, said the pandemic has driven a rise in lawsuits. She’s recently handled a number of cases around parents working remotely with children at home, including one well-known 2020 case of a mother who claimed she wasbecause her child was making noise during business calls. The case was ultimately resolved through mediation.
In mass layoffs like those in the tech industry, that’s a hard standard of proof. But there are many cases where employers are very vocal in their discrimination without realizing it, said Melinda Koster, an attorney who specializes in workplace discrimination. Knowledge of pregnancy laws is limited — it’s common for employers to change workers’ job responsibilities when they return from leave, for example, something that would constitute discrimination.
When she was pregnant with her third child in 2020, she decided to wait to disclose the pregnancy to her direct supervisor and team until 30 days out from her due date — theunder the federal Family and Medical Leave Act . She had cleared that with HR, she said. “I tried to explain to him my reasons, and he wouldn’t listen. He just said, ‘We have bigger problems if you think telling me this late is going to help your career,’” Call said.
“Our internal policies prohibit gender discrimination of any kind or the consideration of pregnancy or parental status in any hiring, promotion, compensation, or dismissal decisions, and we take this commitment very seriously,” Johnson said in the statement. The experience reshaped her priorities around work and parenting, she said, and what to look for in a workplace.The economic challenges that accompany caregiver discrimination follow people across their careers. Women experience a much narrower pay gap early in their careers that then grows as they age — the inflection point is around the age they start to have children.
One person A Better Balance worked with, who wished to remain anonymous over fears it would affect her job prospects, told The 19th she went on leave from her job as an HVAC technician late last year expecting to return to work, but later learned that her employer had actually fired her. When she called to inquire about it, her bosses said they’d rehire her once she was back. Instead, she took a lower-paying job that had more reliable hours.