“What we often hear is that women think they have a right to paid maternity leave, but in actuality only 60 percent of workers are even eligible for unpaid leave,” Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families,’ tells Yahoo! Parenting.
In 2015 groups such as the National Partnership for Women and Families hope to close gaps in federal workplace protections to address the needs of pregnant workers. They are urging Congress to pass the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act to achieve this critical step.
Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families
Nationwide, three states and sixteen cities have passed paid sick days laws. At the same time, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families, “nearly four in 10 private sector workers can’t earn paid sick days.”
More than 250,000 women a year are denied their requests for pregnancy accommodation, according to a 2013 survey by Childbirth Connection, a project of the National Partnership for Women & Families. More than half the women surveyed said they did not request an accommodation because they feared retaliation.
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As of November, 16 cities and three states have paid sick leave ordinances, according to a report from the Philadelphia Mayor’s Task Force on Paid Sick Leave. But some states are passing pre-emption laws that prohibit municipalities from establishing sick leave policies — up to 11 from 2011 through 2014, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families
Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families
A recent study by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that many pregnant women are denied even the simplest accommodations, such as extra bathroom breaks.
There’s still lots of room for improvement, as the map above from the National Partnership for Women & Families reveals: California gets an A- while Utah and Wyoming are among the 17 worst states for new parents and families.
“Charlotte Burrows will make an outstanding EEOC commissioner, and David Lopez’s reappointment as general counsel is both wise and well deserved,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“Every family in America has a stake in the outcome of this case,” said Judith L. Lichtman, a senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, which submitted a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of 12 groups committed to maternal and fetal health.
“It’s really tough to think, that in this day and age, when women are half the workforce, and so many families depend on their income, that women are still having to choose, and potentially, lose their job and lose their health insurance because they’re pregnant,” said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.
(Statistics provided by the National Partnership for Women & Families)
“Here we are at the end of 2014, talking about pregnancy discrimination, which we women’s rights advocates thought we had addressed and basically fixed in 1978,” says Judith Lichtman, senior adviser at the National Partnership of Women and Families.
According to a 2012 poll commissioned by the National Partnership for Women and Families, 86 percent of Americans support paid leave.
“Oregon is entirely blue,” Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women & Families, pointed out. “Paid sick days is something they’ve been working on for a long time.”
On Nov. 24, the Center for American Progress, the National Women’s Law Center and the National Partnership for Women & Families hosted a webinar on pregnancy job discrimination and Young v. UPS. Several experts, including Michele Jawando, Rachel Lyons, Diane Feldman and Emily Martin, discussed the case, the historical context of pregnancy discrimination and information on how to take action—and it’s clear that Young has already made a difference for pregnant workers.
Last year, the National Partnership for Women and Families released findings that showed in South Carolina, on average, a woman who holds a full-time job is paid $31,330 per year while a man who holds a full-time job is paid $41,464 per year.