How Employees With Family Responsibilities Can Guard Against Discrimination on the Job

JOB MARKET

A few years ago, a communications specialist interviewed for a job at a religious charity in Texas when she was

six months pregnant. The human-resources manager who offered her the job didn’t seem to notice her bulging belly, but on the newly hired candidate’s first day of work, her supervisor did.

After asking how far along she was, her boss told her that she couldn’t take any maternity leave. Furthermore, she would be required to attend an event the organization was hosting in a few months; failure to do so would be grounds to fire her.

“I had no choice but to resign,” says the woman, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her privacy. “I didn’t know I could’ve filed a complaint. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as ‘pregnancy discrimination.’”

Legal complaints from women who say they were discriminated against during pregnancy have increased 23 percent in the last decade, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal laws prohibiting employment bias. But it is just one sliver of a much larger and even more rapidly growing category of employment bias triggered by motherhood, say experts.

This broader category, known as “family responsibilities discrimination,” or “caregiver discrimination,” includes such practices as denying an employee with children a promotion even though she is more qualified than other workers, or prohibiting her from using her lunch break to pump breast milk when other workers’ time is not similarly monitored.

Some women mistakenly believe that working at a do-good charity reduces their chances of being discriminated against, says Justine Andronici, an employment lawyer in Washington who has represented victims of bias against their nonprofit employers and is herself a nonprofit veteran. “Some nonprofit employees think they’ll be treated with more fairness and that there will be more responsiveness on the part of employers to employee concerns,” she says. “But the truth is that many nonprofits’ employment practices and policies fall sadly behind some private-sector companies.”

Reports of such discrimination have become so widespread that in May the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a document to help educate both employees and employers about the types of scenarios that are against the law.

Here are some steps that female employees who are pregnant or who are already mothers can take to help protect themselves from workplace discrimination:

Determine if an employer is family-friendly — and know the law. Women should educate themselves about what antidiscrimination policies are — and aren’t — on their employer’s or potential employer’s books, says George Buckley, an employment lawyer in Garden City, N.Y., who represents nonprofit groups. The organization should state in a written document (usually an employee manual) that the charity will not discriminate against its workers based on pregnancy or gender. In addition, he says, the policy should name the person to whom an employee should report a complaint, and give the employee a guarantee that she will not face retribution if she blows the whistle. (See a model policy on the Web site of the Center for WorkLife Law, at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco, which works with both employers and employees to help eliminate bias against workers with family responsibilities.

More important than knowing that a policy exists, however, is determining that it is being enforced, says Ms. Andronici: “Time and time again we see a policy written in a manual that is collecting dust under someone’s desk.” An organization that is serious about curbing discrimination will schedule periodic training for its staff members, she says.

At the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, for example, every manager attends a training session once a year in which all discrimination laws are explained, says John Fuller, the hospital’s diversity and equal-employment-opportunity officer. The hospital also includes antidiscrimination training in its weekly orientation for new employees.

“Before our training, a lot of managers don’t even realize the Pregnancy Discrimination Act exists,” he says, referring to an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which dictates that women who are pregnant must be treated in the same manner as other applicants or employees with similar limitations. “Sometimes I’ll get a question like, ‘But what if I can’t afford for my employee to be on maternity leave?’ My answer is: ‘What would you do if they were leaving to have major surgery?’” says Mr. Fuller, whose institution’s staff is 75 percent female. “It helps when people understand that pregnancy isn’t any different from any other temporary disability.”

Employees should also take note of whether their organization has policies that go above and beyond what the law requires. For instance, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to provide eligible employees with 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for an ailing member of their immediate family. But at Johns Hopkins, workers have the option of stretching family leave for up to a year.

Similarly, while the federal act doesn’t require that employers pay for maternity leave, some charities will do so. The Education Development Center, a nonprofit organization in Newton, Mass., that conducts research and develops programs to improve education and health around the world, for example, provides eight weeks of paid maternity leave, plus four additional unpaid weeks for which an employee can use her vacation time, says Joanna Jones, director of human resources at the charity, whose staff is more than 70 percent female.

For more on the laws protecting workers against discrimination due to pregnancy or family responsibilities — and how to file complaints — see this related article.

Talk to the boss. Discrimination often arises when employers make assumptions about what tasks a pregnant woman or mother is capable of performing, or what types of accommodations she needs, says Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law. A supervisor may assume, for example, that a woman with kids won’t want to travel, or that if she is working a flexible schedule she won’t be able to handle high-level projects, she says. “Rather than make assumptions about what an employee requires, an employer should just ask,” says Ms. Williams.

Many don’t ask, however, so employees needs to clarify their expectations, says Mr. Buckley.

“If a new mother needs time to pump breast milk and she disappears to her car for an hour every day without telling anyone, that doesn’t do the relationship with her employer any good,” he says. “Most often an employer will be willing to make accommodations, but they’re not expected to go searching for what the employee theoretically needs.”

Many employees, particularly those who have just returned from maternity leave, hesitate to ask for accommodations, however, because they fear giving the impression that they cannot perform at 100 percent. To counteract this, it helps to think through possible solutions before confronting the boss.

Being upfront about her needs — and suggesting ideas to help meet them — worked for Cacilia Kim, a lawyer at the California Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization in Los Angeles. Upon returning from maternity leave in early March, she realized that her regular 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. workday was no longer feasible, so she proposed a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. schedule so she could be home before her baby sitter left at 4 p.m. “If I didn’t have that flexibility,” she says, “I don’t think I’d have been able to continue at this job.”

However, while honesty is generally the best policy, it is best to avoid being overly forthcoming, cautions Ms. Jones at the Education Development Center.

She recalls one employee, a mother of two, who asked if she could work at home four days a week. Given the charity’s policy, which allows for any employee to telecommute with their supervisor’s approval, it was a reasonable request.

But then the employee stated that she “needed to cut back on work and could no longer devote 110 percent to her job,” recalls Ms. Jones. Because she was a valued employee, her manager granted the flexible schedule, but as a result of her remarks, she was ultimately passed over for a promotion for which she was being considered.

It wasn’t discrimination, Ms. Jones says, because the employee explicitly stated that she wouldn’t be willing to dedicate the necessary time. “Women need to be thoughtful about what personal information they share because it can have repercussions,” she says.

Show commitment. Keeping active communication with the boss and other co-workers while out on maternity leave can help avoid an “out of sight, out of mind” scenario for new mothers, says Mr. Fuller at Johns Hopkins. “Send an e-mail to your colleagues telling them that everything is great with the baby but you can’t wait to come back to work,” he says. “They may be thinking of you for the next promotion, but when you don’t keep in touch they might assume you’re more focused on your home life and wouldn’t be interested.”

Similarly, after returning from leave, an employee should get up to speed as soon as possible and enthusiastically offer to take back any responsibilities that have been doled out to others, says Jocelyn Frye, general counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families, in Washington. “That demonstration of energy and interest in getting back to work immediately is an important signal for people,” she says.

But making that kind of effort isn’t always easy. Ms. Kim says that because she fears being marginalized, she has been extra vigilant since returning from leave and has even pulled a couple of all-nighters to meet deadlines.

“I am trying to be as productive as I was before so that people see that I can still handle my job,” she says. “But frankly, I’m exhausted.”

Still, she says she is committed to making it work, and having a supportive employer makes all the difference.

“My supervisor doesn’t have a child, so she doesn’t realize some of the difficulties I have with balancing everything,” she says. “But when I do talk with her, she’s been very understanding.”

Don’t assume changes in work duties signal discrimination. The line between true discrimination and the mere perception of it isn’t always clear, so an employee who has been out on leave shouldn’t jump to conclusions, says Ms. Frye.

“Whenever you’re out of the workplace for a while, things will be always be a little different when you get back,” she says. “Give yourself time to assess the lay of the land.”

For instance, if a worker returns from maternity leave and notices that some of her responsibilities have been reassigned, she shouldn’t automatically assume she is being marginalized, says Ms. Frye: “The nature of the work may have changed for reasons that have nothing to do with your absence.”

This is another area where good communication becomes vital, she adds. Talk to the supervisor, Ms. Frye suggests, “but do so in a nonthreatening way. You might say: ‘I did a great job on this before I left, and I’d like to take on that responsibility again.’”

Mr. Fuller adds that an employee may need to “resell” herself a bit, since the boss has gotten used to getting by without her. “But once you convince your supervisor that you can still handle the same work you did before, they’ll most likely be thrilled to have you back,” he says. “A temporary employee is no substitute for the institutional knowledge and know-how that you bring.”

For information on interviewing for a job while pregnant or juggling family responsibilities, check out this previous Philanthropy Careers article. To discuss your own experience with juggling family responsibilities on the job (or supervising workers who have significant family needs that require time away from the office), go to the Interoffice Memo online forum.