INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
Pregnant women in Canada find themselves the victims of ‘medieval discrimination’
Coast to coast, women in Canada are still reporting discrimination in the workplace for having babies.
As the world marks International Women’s Day, pregnancy discrimination complaints continue to roll in regularly at Canada’s human rights commissions — and in some provinces, the numbers are rising at alarming rates.
The number of cases has spiked in British Columbia, where the BC Human Rights Coalition said 21 of 165 cases it represented in the 2010-11 period were based on pregnancy discrimination. That’s a 50 per cent increase from the number of pregnancy-related cases it took on in the previous fiscal year.
The fact this discrimination still exists is “somewhat medieval,” said coalition spokesman Robyn Durling.
“You think society would have evolved beyond the point that somebody gets pregnant and it’s going to mean termination from their employment,” he added.
“Canada’s a civilized country. We all expect that, as a society, we’re going to support women and support their right to have children. But we have individuals that just don’t go along with that.”
Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, women cannot be discriminated against in any aspect of employment because of a pregnancy.
Pregnancy discrimination is considered a form of sex discrimination, according to the act. It’s illegal to refuse to hire or to promote a woman, to terminate her employment or to harass her in relation to a pregnancy.
Complaints typically come in three forms: discrimination during the hiring process; discrimination — often through dismissal — while on parental leave; and a failure of an employer to accommodate the needs or physical restrictions of a pregnant woman.
The increase in discrimination complaints may be due to difficulties in the economy and the current high unemployment levels, said Elizabeth Shilton, a senior fellow with the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
There’s a lot of pressure for employers, particularly those with small- and medium-sized businesses, and it can be difficult and costly to hold positions open while women are on pregnancy leave, Shilton said.
“If they’re under the gun because of tough economic times, they may be taking shortcuts they wouldn’t otherwise have taken because they feel the economic pressure to do so.”
There’s also competition for available jobs, Shilton said.
“The laws haven’t changed. What is likely to have changed is the flexibility available to employers and the lack of other options that women returning from pregnancy leave may have,” Shilton said.
“In a buoyant economy, it would often be not worth filing a human rights complaint to try to protect a job that you had prior to being on pregnancy leave. You could just go out and get another one.”
But when those other jobs aren’t available, Shilton said, hanging onto the one you have becomes much more important.
In Alberta, between April 2009 and the end of last month, the provincial Human Rights Commission received 2,138 complaints. Nearly 25 per cent — 532 complaints — were related to pregnancy.
In the 12 months beginning April 1, 2009, it received 197 pregnancy discrimination claims. That number jumped to 205 the following year. In the past 11 months, 130 similar complaints have been filed with the commission.
The executive director of the Manitoba human rights commission said the number of sex-related complaints, which also account for pregnancy and parental leave complaints, have reached troubling levels in recent years.
“Certainly, we have seen an increase, which is surprising because this human rights legislation has been in place for a very long time,” Dianna Scarth said Wednesday. “We know the importance of education and we do a lot of work with employers, with workshops and seminars. It’s really unfortunate, but we are seeing an increase in complaints.”
Women make pregnancyrelated inquiries with Ontario’s Human Rights Legal Support Centre every day, said spokeswoman Jennifer Ramsay.
The Ontario centre received 6,448 inquiries related to sex discrimination in 2010-11, and the “vast majority” of those were about pregnancy, Ramsay said.
“It is pretty shocking that in 2012, employers continue to actually try to terminate or not return to work women who are pregnant or are talking about becoming pregnant, but it does happen,” she said.
Quebec’s Human Rights Commission received 13 workplace pregnancy discrimination complaints in the 2010-11 fiscal year.
It’s surprising that women are still facing this discrimination at all, said commission president Gaetan Cousineau.