[slipjack]

One major issue in this scenario: you don’t know who wants/can/will have kids. Discriminating against women because they have a uterus and might get pregnant and might have a problematic pregnancy and might carry to term and might give birth and might take parental leave is incredibly short-sighted - even in your scenario you’ve just missed out on 4+ years of work because you’re worried about a few (potential) months.

Beyond that, while (cis) women have the necessary equipment to have kids, we’re not the only ones with bodies that can get sick. Penalizing all women for one particular way of (potentially) disrupting work is incredibly unfair, and ignores that men also can need leaves of absence.

[shados]

The point is that unlike things like race discrimination, when all other things are equal, there IS a real difference, no matter how small, in term of risk (and in practice, it's really not that small). I worked at a large company where most employees were women in the 20-35 yo rangeny for a while on HR project and saw some of the data. It was not pretty.

As a society though, we shouldn't let that be ground for discrimination. As you mentioned, not all women want or will have kids. Of those who do, many will have supportive significant others, and the difference in productivity will be negligible. Even if it wasn't, I don't want to live in a world where people have trouble getting a job because they might end up doing something a very significant portion of the population will do.

But it's still a fact that, given 2 exactly equivalent candidate, both in their mid twenties, one is a guy, one's a woman, there is a well known, significant short to medium term risk in the later, if only looking at it from a local maximum perspective. We as a society need to find a way to artificially make up for it.

My personal favorite solution is to give both men and women equal (mandatory?) parental leaves, and no difference if its an adoption, same sex partners, or anything like that. Yes, women have an actual medical need, yes it might not be quite representative of reality, but that equalizes the risk from an employer perspective. No difference between the man and the woman (bonus point, it will help even out parental contribution and responsabilities at home).

That still leaves the age discrimination, but considering ageism is often against older people, that might really just even things out a little.

[bluecalm]

Mandatory leave for both parents is a terrible idea. There are a lot of people who prefer traditional model where one parent works and the other takes care of children and home. Why would you force those people to loie according to some relatively modern untested family model?