Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace

This week, the EEOC held a public meeting on unlawful discrimination against pregnant workers and workers with caregiving responsibilities at which experts, including the National Women’s Law Center’s own Vice President and General Counsel Emily Martin, presented compelling testimony setting out the widespread and often blatant ways in which employers continue to unlawfully discriminate in the workplace. Members of the Commission expressed dismay, if not complete surprise, that nearly 35 years after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) was passed in 1978, discrimination on the basis of pregnancy persists, in the words of EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien, “unnecessarily depriving women of the means to support their families.”