Australian Failing to Protect Pregnant Workers
- A new report says Australian laws designed to protect pregnant women workers and women on maternity leave are not functioning as they should.
- “Employers can, and do, easily flout the existing regulations,” according to the report A Pregnant Pause, which is based on the experience of 76 women in the first half of 2008 who sought aid over alleged pregnancy-related discrimination.
- Half of those women lost their jobs despite the 30-year-old Sex Discrimination Act’s protections for pregnant women, including the right in most cases to 12 months of unpaid leave.
- According to Pat McDonough, a co-author of the report, a “‘culture of antagonism’ towards pregnant women workers and women on maternity leave is alive and well”.
- The report also notes how women were offered inferior positions after maternity leave, were refused part-time work or were denied promotions.
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