The Find: More than 75 percent of UK managers would not hire a woman if they suspect she will become pregnant within six months of taking the job.- The Source: A recent survey by UK-based Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS) mentioned in the Harvard Business Review Conversation Starter and the UK press.
The Takeaway: ELA surveyed 1,100 UK executives and hiring managers and came away with some eye-opening statistics:
- Just 5 percent of managers would offer a job to a pregnant candidate
- 52 percent said they assessed the likelihood of a candidate’s getting pregnant, including her age and whether she had recently married, when deciding whether to hire her
- 76 percent said they would not hire a woman if they knew she was going to become pregnant within six months of starting the job
- 86 percent said they would feel “cheated” if a new recruit announced within weeks that she was pregnant
If you think the problem is limited to UK, Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, the editor of Harvard Management Update and author of the recent Conversation Starter post, points out that last year the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “saw a 14% increase in pregnancy-discrimination complaints and received 20,400 pregnancy-bias inquiries at its newly established call center.”
The Question: would you think twice before hiring a pregnant woman or one you thought had a high likelihood of soon becoming pregnant?
(Image of pregnant woman by karindalziel, CC 2.0)
