Employment law pregnancy leave in 2022
The topic of parental leave has been a center of negotiation in the workplace for as long as people have gotten pregnant and given birth. It is a heavily gendered issue that affects parents in a multitude of ways. Not only is it a matter of a drastic change in physical health for a new parent, but it is also a major life adjustment that must be mastered through organization, financial means, and human resourcing. By utilizing arbitration, negotiation, and mediation, the discrepancies that may arise from this required time-off can and have been settled. What is not to be denied are the rights of new parents, families, and especially women. Through exploring gender disagreements in this topic, workplace laws, practices that regulate this human experience, contemporary conversations in this realm, and the unfair treatment towards pregnant women, the understanding and respecting of employment law will prevent any further wrong-doings in the place of an occupation. It is known that “With over 80 to 85 percent of women in the workforce becoming pregnant during their employment,” this is a regulatory practice that any company or business must master in order to adhere to gender equality and human respect. By using a variety of academic sources, this topic is further explored, defined, honored, and recognized.
Keywords: Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, Parent Leave, Pregnancy, Pregnant, Parental Leave, Surrogate, Adoption, Gestational Diabetes, PostPartum Depression, Contemporary Gender Issues, Gender Discrimination, Women in the Work Force
this is a gendered issue.
Gender discrepancies
Gender plays a vital role when it comes to building a family, and this is why required time off is needed for new parents; This is also a key contributor to the diasgreements among employees and employers and men and women. Any mediator or arbitrator should be aware of and prepared for the gender dynamics that will become apparent in this kind of conflict. Authors Patrice Buzzanell and Meina Liu write in their work, titled “It’s ‘Give and Take’: Maternity Leave as a Conflict Management Process,” researchers examined twenty-six women who felt various emotions when it came to working while pregnant and on maternity leave; These women felt personal struggles and external stresses through the reactions of their employers and coworkers. As a result, some women felt more supported than others, depending on the place of their employment. Buzzanel and Liu defined conflict as, “the interaction of interdependent people who percieve incompatible goals and interference from one another in achieving those goals” (Buzzanel & Liu page 463). Clearly, conflict arises from a misunderstanding, inability to understand, or the personal choice not to understand, and this is exacerbated as a result of the difference in genders. As the authors also mention, most of these conflicts occure when there is no structure for when conflict arises or when there is a structure in place that is not strictly followed. The issue with pregnancy could come down to anatomy, such as the fact that women can bare children and men can not, or the fact that one woman could not have the ability to bare a child while another does. Another place that this can stem from could be personal beliefs, such as having a child out of wedlock, having a child in general, having a child with a particular partner, or having over a certain number of children. Another source of conflict could be how a woman chooses to have a child, the practices she includes with creating a child, such as breastfeeding or not, the means of aquiring a child like adoption or surrogate pregnancy. A residual factor that affects these mediations are medical problems that could arise from pregnancy, such as postpartum depression and gestational diabetes.
Workplace laws and practices surrounding maternity leave
“In addition to sexuality and asymmetrical power relations, maternity leave upsets the ‘normal’ linear notions of work and career as well as human capital attainment (i.e. return on investments such as education or training)” (Buzzanel & Liu page 465) There is no denying that losing an employee, or a particularly well trained employee, for a period of time is not ideal for a business that has a main focus of gaining a profit or completing a task at large, especially during a pivotal time. However, the laws set in place are what protect families and employers through navigating this experience. The most known providers and protectors for pregnant employees are the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), in California there is the California State Disability Insurance (SDI), Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), and the Employer Offered Maternity Leave (EOML).There are no excuses by an employer for not giving a woman the time off that she deserves in order to have her child. An employer should also not utilize this time off that she needs to hire a new candidate. These laws protect women and prevent the widening of the already large pay gap among the genders. Buzzanel and Liu say in their other work based on this issue “Struggling with Maternity Leave Policies and Practices: A Poststructuralist Feminist Analysis of Gendered Organizing” a more legal approach to maternity and gender-based mediated conflict. “The two laws that operate as baselines for employees' rights in workplace maternity and family leave discussions are the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA) and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA).” The PDA essentially states that a pregnant person is not to be treated any differently than a non-pregnant employee that needs to take time off for a medical reason. For companies with over fifteen employees, the standard amount of time of leave is six to eight weeks. Now, whether the time is paid, or not, and if they are guaranteed their same job once they return is left on the table for the employee and employer to discuss in their practices, although these laws and acts cover that protection to a degree. On the other hand, the FMLA allows up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for medical and pregnant conditions, which is vastly different from the PDA. As a result, many pregnant women feel uneasy and add extra stress to their pregnancy if they are unsure if their job will be guaranteed once they return; There are fears that this may give an employer an opportunity to hire a more ideal/younger/older/different/etc fit for the job. It is up to the regulations and policies if they are promised their job back depending on how long they have worked for a company, how close they live to their company’s office, how much they are paid, and the state that they work in. What these regulations fail to factor in is the work environment, work culture, balance of powers, and unique superior-subordinate relationships. Problems will occur if one woman is promised her job back in a couple of months and another is not, or if one woman is paid while on leave and another is not. Authors Sylvia Guendelman, Julia Goodman, Martin Kharrazi, Maureen Lahiff write in their research on this topic, specifically in California, “Work–Family Balance After Childbirth: The Association Between Employer-Offered Leave Characteristics and Maternity Leave Duration” found that through a regulatory practice based off of the EOML standards that women who were offered six to twelve weeks for maternity leave had a five time higher odds of returning to work in under twelve weeks. Their study also found that women who were offered no specific or no leave time were six times more likely for an early return. Their study mentioned that women who had access to materials explaining their specific amount of time for maternity leave, whether they were paid or not, and other resources determined the timing of their return. Undoubtedly, the regulations set in practice by the company directly affected these families and their experiences with welcoming their child into the world. Generally the employees are compliant when it comes to following their employers rules.
Contemporary issues in parent leave. As society progresses and women serve a higher purpose than to be a mother, employment laws are continuously changing to keep up with an ever-evolving society. “The perspective that mothers should be (or prefer to be) in the home, not the workforce, is associated with a number of other discriminating attitudes” Many of these limiting beliefs have been instilled in culture for most of the time that humans have walked this Earth. “Poststructuralist feminism enables researchers to destabilize and critique institutional texts and organization theory as well as the discourse and practices of individual women.” Motherhood is very distinct to the female experience and pregnancy should be normalized as a taxing experience on both men and women despite the physical differences. The multiple realities of pregnancy are complex, vast, and confusing to all understand. In the world of employment law, these written practices for when an employee becomes pregnant are far too often thrown up for debate, perceived differently, and interpreted inconsistently among men and women, even in 2022. There is no loop hole when it comes to giving women adequate time off for pregnancy. Authors Arianna Constantini, Stephan Dickert, Riccardo Sartori and Andrea Ceschi found an incredible finding in their real-life research on this topic:
Although appointing women to leadership roles within organizations can
symbolize a modern approach to management (Eagly and Carli, 2003), we argue
that organizational structures need to be in place to accommodate a healthy
work–life balance. Specifically, results indicate that organizations may support
work-related psychological well-being of women in management positions who
recently become mothers by offering services and spaces to facilitate the efficient
management of work and family.
Clearly, their findings made it obvious that a company yields more fruitful, enjoyable, and their employees become more loyal and committed to their occupations when women are accommodated appropriately. There is no short or cheap way out when it comes to an employer caring for their pregnant employees. The study also found that successful companies have mastered this process with their human resources sector that aim heavily at the support of women once they return back to work, rather than on the onset of the news of pregnancy; This is proven when women suffer from the lasting effects, such as postpartum depression (PPD), “Reward at work might act as a potential protective factor against PPD and should be promoted.” Many companies may use a higher number of hired women for an ideal public relations aspect, image wise, but it will only be solidified and authentic when they are prepared and able to execute a successful parental leave process.
Furthermore, the United States is viewed as a more individualistic country compared to many other countries in the East. Authors Zaiton Hassan, Maureen Dollard, and Anthony Winefield write in their work: “Family is the most important in-group in collectivist cultures…and whatever happens in or to the family in collectivist cultures includes not only the immediate family but also the extended members-aunts, uncles, cousins…” This is the opposite to what the US is accustomed to, even to the degree that many men are not given parental leave. In a study by Human Resource Management International Digest they found in individualistic societies that “Work-family conflict is shown to partially mediate the relationship between the availability of [maternity leave benefits] and work engagement and the availability of [maternity leave benefits] moderates the relationship between work engagement and work-family conflict.” So, denying families benefits and opportunies for both men and women is actually becomes detrimental to a company as a whole; As a result, they will have less satisfied employees, less productive employees, and a lower quality work culture.
Conclusion. Ultimately, the regular practice of parent leave must be provided by companies in order to prevent gender discrepencies and disagreements, honor workplace laws and regulations, and to prevent the worsening of contemporary issues like the wage gap and denormalization of parental leave.
References
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Buzzanell, P. M., & Liu, M. (2005). Struggling with maternity leave policies and
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Costantini, Arianna, Stephan Dickert, Riccardo Sartori, and Andrea Ceschi. 2020. “Return to Work After Maternity Leave: The Role of Support Policies on Work Attitudes of Women in Management Positions.” Gender in Management: An International Journal 36(1):108–30.
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