As much as I hate jumping on the it’s-a misogynist-world-after-all band wagon, a recent study shows that women face serious job discrimination in their child bearing years.

The BBC reported on an new UK study’s findings:

And 76% of managers admitted that they would not hire a new recruit if they knew they were going to fall pregnant within six months of starting the job…

About 52% of those surveyed said that they considered the chances of a candidate getting pregnant taking into account age and whether they have just got married…

Other findings included only 5% employing someone knowing they were pregnant with 86% saying they would feel “cheated” if someone announced their pregnancy weeks after joining a firm.

The UK offers paid maternity leave, so pregnancy is arguably, more supported by their society than ours. And look at their study results. In fact, most nations mandate it per a 2004 Harvard Study

To put it another way, out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

In the US, California was the first state to legislate paid maternity leave, followed by Washington state. New Jersey if finalizing its own bill. However, most American women can only rely on the Family Medical Leave Act. In an interview with USA Today, Debra Ness of the National Partnership of Women and Families commented that

“The top 20 most economically competitive countries in the world have all figured out how to do it,” says Ness. “But not the United States.”

She points out that an estimated 40 percent of the work force is not even eligible for FMLA protection, because there have to be more than 50 employees in a workplace and an employee has to have been there for at least a year

A final note: In the United States women reported 5587 cases in 2007, which is a 14% INCREASE in instances of discrimination in 2006 and a 40% INCREASE compared to 1997. These are just the REPORTED cases of discrimination.

Given the above findings, is being upfront in a job interview about planning to get pregnant or being pregnant really the only option as Christine Hassler suggests in her Huffington Post column?

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