NOT SHOWING: When a woman doesn’t yet appear pregnant, telling a potential employer can be tricky. (Getty Images/Cultura RF)
NO BABY: A record number of pregnant women looking for new jobs filed discrimination claims last year. (
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Waddling into a job interview 6-months pregnant, I worried my bulging belly would scream: Don’t hire me. Although my stomach visibly moved like a wave passing through me as I spoke, I survived the interview and several others while fighting morning sickness, fatigue and an obvious disadvantage in the tightest job market in recent history.
I’m not alone. Pregnant women are no longer shying away from the job search, a trend being driven by the bad economy and the changing role of women in the workplace.
They also feel discriminated against more than ever. Complaints for failure to hire because of pregnancy hit a record high last year at 233, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
It’s not clear if complaints are up because more companies are discriminating or more pregnant women are interviewing, but the reasons for the bump in pregnant job hunters are plenty.
The recession has made layoffs so routine that pregnant women are increasingly being bounced into unemployment and an unplanned job search, as I was. Or their husbands are unemployed and their plans to take a maternity leave have turned into the need to find a better-paying job, experts say.
“It’s becoming so common that pregnant women are looking for jobs,” says Liz Ryan who runs a women’s networking business and has 20 years experience in human resources. A decade ago, she says, pregnant women never interviewed for jobs, but now she hears about such cases at least twice a month.
There are also more opportunities for mothers-to-be, particularly those who are older and more established in their careers than a generation ago. As a result, promotions and calls from recruiters may come when they are pregnant.
“Society is changing. Employers are not feeling as uncomfortable with this as they used to,” says Jennifer Loftus, national director of Astron Solutions, an HR consulting company based in Manhattan. “People have babies and they want a career so, we [the workplace] have to flow between the two worlds.”
When Marissa Mayer snagged a job as Yahoo’s CEO this spring in her third trimester, she claimed the tech giant’s board wasn’t concerned about her pregnancy. “They showed their evolved thinking,” she told Fortune.
Still, the legal issues are thorny.
It’s illegal for an employer not to hire a woman because she is pregnant. While a future employer is allowed to ask about pregnancy, such questions could be viewed as evidence of intent to discriminate, according to EEOC spokeswoman Justine Lisser.
It’s difficult to prove an employer failed to hire a woman because she was pregnant, says employment lawyer Bryan Arce.
“It’s rare an employer will say, ‘I’m worried about what’s going to happen when you have the baby.’ And without comments like that, it’s difficult to show you weren’t hired because of pregnancy,” he says.
Also, a pregnancy isn’t documented when you fill out a job application, making a paper trail impossible and giving employers an easy way to deny they knew an applicant was pregnant, he explains.
But biases against pregnant applicants by both sexes are real. A 1997 study found that pregnant job applicants where treated rudely during interviews by both men and women. The potential employers didn’t make eye contact and stood far away from the expectant moms.
“On a conscious level men and women realize pregnant women can work, but there is a subconscious level where they think pregnant women are incompetent,” says Eden King, a psychology professor at George Mason University in Washington, DC, who co-authored the study.
Because of these stereotypes, disclosing the pregnancy is a delicate matter. Legally, women are not required to do so at any point during the interview or acceptance process. Practically, many women choose not to ambush their employer weeks into a new job.
During the first trimester, most HR experts and lawyers advise keeping mum about your baby when invited to an interview, since many women aren’t open about the pregnancy for fear of miscarriage at this point.
“No one has ever gone into a job interview saying, ‘My doctor thinks I need major surgery in six months,’ ” says Ryan.
The only exception, experts say, is if the job involves manual labor you won’t be able to perform.
The best time to tell employers, if you are not showing, is after an offer is made, and it shouldn’t be an issue you discuss at length, says Loftus.
“Ethically, you want to do right by your employer. Perhaps once the offer is extended you can say, ‘I’m excited to come on board, and in four months I may need to [take maternity] leave,” says Loftus.
If you are sporting a bump, Ryan advises bringing up the taboo subject mid-interview and offering your game plan for how to deal with the workload when the baby comes. “Instead of thinking, ‘I hope they don’t notice,’ ” she says, “you are taking control.”