[strictfp]

Speaking as a Swede, that is not entirely true in my experience. It's still expensive for employers and they don't like hiring women who will soon be pregnant.Or their men for that matter, but those are harder to spot :) I have female friends who changed jobs just before getting pregnant or visibly pregnant, and those employers were not happy.

[crdoconnor]

>I have female friends who changed jobs just before getting pregnant or visibly pregnant, and those employers were not happy.

I have a friend whose wife did that in the UK. The employer then let her go. They sued and either won or settled (can't remember which).

I think it was for an executive type role.

[TomMarius]

Well I'm going to play the devil's advocate: How would you feel about looking for an employee for months, spending tremendous amounts of money on recruiting them, training them afterwards, only to find out that they're not going to work for you for several years and didn't even mention that, possibly messing up your financial situation, screwing up any long term planning, etc? How do you feel when someone takes an unplanned vacation (and that's just for a few weeks)?

The other cases of harassment are terrible. But I can sympathize with the managers/business owners on this one - not that I support them. I see their point.

[dragonwriter]

> Well I'm going to play the devil's advocate: How would you feel about looking for an employee for months, spending tremendous amounts of money on recruiting them, training them afterwards, only to find out that they're not going to work for you for several years and didn't even mention that, possibly messing up your financial situation, screwing up any long term planning, etc?

Were I hiring in an environment where that was a legally protected right, I'd probably work it into my hiring planning in advance, then if it was occurring more often than I had accounted for, try to evaluate whether my planning was bad.

Can't see the point in getting upset about it.

[hackerman12345]

If you planned to hire based on an immediate need, it would require you to discriminate against pregnant women though. For example, if you need someone to do x immediately for the next y months, hiring someone who you know would need leave during that would be a pretty major issue.

So maybe you could simply hire her as well as another person who would be less likely to require leave during that period, but then your payroll needs grow - not a great business decision for a startup or whatever.

I think it's easy to see how this could be a predicament for a business without extra money and "get over it" isn't a very good answer IMO - at the very least you'll have discrimination being done in disguise until there's a better answer.

[carlob]

How do you feel doesn't go into it. You probably feel like shit, granted. But we as a society have decided that it's more important that women can feel at least a little bit safer having a family as well as a career and we've regulated this so that they can be protected from losing their job.

In some more advanced countries than the US or Papua New Guinea there is even mandatory paid leave, go figure.

As an exercise you can take the pregnant woman in your example and replace with a cyclist in a bike accident or someone who was just diagnosed with cancer.

[TomMarius]

I live in one of these 'more advanced countries'. The system is bad, expensive and has many issues, but that doesn't matter for this discussion. What matters is that in these more advanced countries, for example in the one where I live, it's actually very normal to tell your manager about this so they can plan for that - and then there are no issues on either side.

BTW the paid leave is not paid by the employer, it's paid out of mandatory government insurance.

EDIT: please reply and discuss before downvoting. Downvoting adds nothing to the discussion.

[TomMarius]

Reaction to your edit with a cyclist, I have no idea how that relates to this case. That's an accident, something that no one knew will happen, and everyone understands that. On the other hand it doesn't seem nice to purposefully not tell someone information that might be extremely important to them and might even mean if they do or do not lose their business.

[PeterisP]

The position here is that it's not information that might be extremely important to them. Legally (and ethically!) this information literally can not, must not influence any of their decisions regarding that employee in any way whatsoever. What is the employer going to do if they tell them if they can't use that information or act on it? They might do something, but they should not; they likely want to do something, but they should be prevented from doing so.

In essence, the applicant has a right to demand treatment as if the employer didn't know that information. By not telling them, they're exercising that right, taking precautions so that it wouldn't be violated in a way that's illegal but hard to prove.

[TomMarius]

What? That an employee will be away for several years is not an important information? Since when?

The employee has right to be treated as if the information was unknown, I never said the opposite and never wanted to even imply that (and I'm pretty sure that I did not). That doesn't mean that the employer shouldn't have an opportunity to plan accordingly (e.g. start looking for a temporary replacement, stop accepting new projects and so on).

[PeterisP]

Okay, yes, there are some reasonable and legal actions that can be taken with that information, so it is valuable, I was apparently exaggerating.

However, giving that information right before a decision point (i.e. when changing jobs, getting a promotion, etc) is just inviting it to be misused, it's a risk they shouldn't be required or always expected to take.

For some context, some time ago I was involved in handling quite a few maternity/replacement situations. Our local laws are quite generous with maternity leave, so for existing employees we (in that company) had often started planning replacements as early as 6 months before start of their leave. However, this is a bit tricky - if there was some promotion issue in the middle of that period (3 months after I'd known but 3 months before she'd leave), I could try acting as if that information was unknown, but it's difficult, I can't magically unlearn things, I couldn't be sure myself if I wasn't biased one way or another (unless we had extremely dry formal procedure based on some arbitrary "objective" metrics that mismeasure as much as they measure), and I definitely couldn't prove that I wasn't influenced if that was contested. So in such an situation I might have even preferred not to know, despite the extra hassle it would cause.

It's probably a question of trust. If an employee is working in a trustworthy environment, they'd likely volunteer that information (which I've seen happen) and the employer would benefit from having created such an environment. But if employees feel a lack of trust, they would likely want to protect themselves and keep it a secret (which I've also seen happen), and IMHO they have (or should have) a right to do so if they really feel the need. The employer's reputation and trustworthiness is their own fault or achievement based on their previous actions, so in some sense they deserve what they get, whether it's trust or lack of it.

[carlob]

Pregnancies are not all exactly planned…

[zaarn]

And pregnancies don't happen out of the blue either.

[TomMarius]

Maternal leaves are, though.

[gowld]

You can pay for performance and offer retention bonuses if you are concerned that your employees increase in value over time until later.

[urahara]

Why do you think that women who forced to constantly experience all kinds of problems and overload because of their gender, should be concerned about well being of groups and institutions (that tend to force them into these problems) at the expense of their own safety? Maybe you imply some ideal situation in which it is totally safe for an average woman to communicate openly like you suggest, but how often is it really the case given a huge problem of sexism we are discussing here and multiple evidence of which you were just presented?

[internetman55]

Agree Let's face facts, it's stupid to care for some random company morally in that case. And let's face some more facts, even if you don't believe in morals or agree with that one, it's way more important at the societal level for women to be able to have children then for some rando company to be guaranteed a profit

[TomMarius]

That "rando company" you're talking about is most probably an ordinary citizen just like you (most businesses are sole entrepreneurs and SMBs) and that "profit" is their living, they pay their food, shelter and healthcare for their kids and themselves with that. How would you feel like if someone said these things about women? Are you aware there are woman business owners as well and how would you feel if a woman-owned small business would go under because of this; what if the woman owner is pregnant and/or recently had a child and/or is single mother? Do you realize that you're literally surrounded by businesspeople on this site - do you think they're something less? How did you get the impression that businesses are not primarily humans? How can you say these awful things about others?

There of course are some "faceless corporations", I agree, but I'm not talking about these - the cost of an employee going on a leave is a fraction of their monthly budget. But most of businesses are small and can get into serious trouble easily.

And lastly, no one is talking about guaranteeing a profit at all.

[austincheney]

Morals and opinions aren't facts. Your correlation of these works doesn't make sense.

[TomMarius]

Well as I said in another comment, I live in Europe, so it's definitely very different here.

I have several points. Let's not blame organizations for the actions of individuals (given that the organization properly deals with said individual). Let's not blame the whole industry or the whole society for the actions of individuals. If something happened to me at a conference, I won't blame my manager who is not connected to the individual that did it in any way for that - and I won't make them suffer because of that.

Of course there might be a reason to not communicate that and that's completely alright, it's business after all, but let's not make it a default choice, please - let's stay human and be nice to each other.

[urahara]

It is sad to see that even after many good explanations by other users you're in complete denial of facts that 1) normally it is dangerous for women to report openly 2) they have right to not do so 3) they are not responsible for companies's mismanagement of this possibility 4) given all this, what matters significantly more here is a woman's safety and not awareness of a company.

[TomMarius]

It is sad that after so many good explanations by me you're in complete denial of facts that

1) normally it isn't (in Europe at least), but I said that I definitely can see situations when it is (in Europe as well as elsewhere) and I never suggested nor said that there aren't any such situations or that it's negligible

2) I'm not talking about them not having a right to do so nor I'm suggesting they shouldn't; I'm saying that using this right should be properly considered before doing so instead of taking it as a default

3) Most companies (again, in Europe, but I'm pretty sure that in the USA as well) don't have any way to do anything about this mismanagement, most companies are small businesses that don't have enough money for that. Not telling them information like this will mean that they will prefer men or risk going under (because the risk of being catched illegally preferring men could be smaller than that). Do you realise that this directly contributes to pay inequality because hiring woman is more riskful than hiring a man (and no, the risk is not the maternal leave itself, the risk lies in being in a situation that you couldn't properly plan for beforehand)?

4) the business is owned by people, possibly women with exactly the same issues as well, but you suggest they don't have the same rights for safety?

I'm sorry to be rude, but did you read what I wrote? Maybe do it again, more carefully? You sound like I suggest depriving women of that right, but I explicitly said that this is not something I want to suggest.

Seems like people completely forgot that having millions of dollars in investments is not common.

[TomMarius]

> Seems like people completely forgot that having millions of dollars in investments is not common.

The average business in the Czech Republic makes $900 in profit per month.

[urahara]

There are no countries where the problem of sexism is solved. Maybe it is better in Europe, but it still exists everywhere and still huge. And in the most countries it is times worse. It is reasonable to protect oneself from that behavior with all legal means and it would be strange to expect anything else of a person facing high probability of being discriminated against.

[IntronExon]

Well as I said in another comment, I live in Europe, so it's definitely very different here.

As a growing number have pointed out in response to that claim, no... no it isn’t.