Friday Feminist Fuck You: Pregnancy Discrimination

Related posts:
Supreme Court: Pregnancy discrimination A-OK!
Pregnancy Discrimination Galore at Bloomberg LP
Quick Hit: Employers get real (discriminatory)
Pregnancy discrimination complaints at record levels
Pregnancy discrimination on the rise
Double whammy

Approximate transcript after the jump.

This week we’re saying fuck you to pregnancy discrimination. It’s a topic in the news this week because the Supreme Court recently ruled that it was ok for AT&T to give several retired women lower pensions because they took time off from work for maternity leave.

Basically, when women took leave from their AT&T jobs to have a baby, those days did not count toward their pensions — even though other types of leave, such as temporary disability, were not removed from the pension equation. So when the women went to retire, they had lower pensions than other employees who had worked there the same number of years, even those who had taken leave for other reasons.

The court ruled that, because all of this happened before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed, the women just have to deal with getting a lower pension.

This ties into another issue, which is that women are more likely than men to spend their retirement years in poverty. Women tend to live longer, and have lower earnings over the course of their working lives.

So this Supreme Court decision affects way more than the women who worked for AT&T. It affects a whole lot of women who are retired now or will be retiring soon.

It’s time to push Congress to enact legislation, much like the Ledbetter fair pay act, that will fix this situation.

In short, FUCK YOU to pregnancy discrimination, and FUCK YEAH to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Now let’s make it apply to all women.