Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

Thirty-five years ago the Pregnancy Discrimination Act outlawed discrimination against pregnant workers. But still today, pregnant women across the country are being fired from their jobs, forced onto unpaid leave, or made to quit when they need temporary accommodations like staying off high ladders or refraining from heavy lifting. Many women can work throughout their pregnancies without any changes to their jobs. But for some pregnant workers – particularly those in low-wage and physically demanding jobs – slight job modifications can be crucial to their ability to continue safely working during pregnancy. Despite the fact that comparable accommodations are routinely offered when employees need them because of disabilities, employers often refuse to make even simple accommodations for pregnant women. As a result, many pregnant women are prevented from continuing to work even when they are willing and able to do so. Other women stay on the job despite a lack of accommodation because they can’t afford not to, potentially jeopardizing their health and the health of their pregnancies.

Today, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), in tandem with A Better Balance (ABB), is releasing It Shouldn't Be A Heavy Lift: Fair Treatment for Pregnant Workers, which tells the stories of eight women who were refused the same sorts of accommodations during their pregnancy that their employers provided to other workers. As the report describes, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) requires employers to treat pregnant workers the same as those “similar in their ability or inability to work.” So if employers make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, as they must under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the PDA requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant workers with similar limitations, too. But all too often, employers and the courts misunderstand and misinterpret these requirements.

Take the case of Peggy Young, whom the Center has written about before. Young worked as an air driver for UPS. When she became pregnant, UPS told her she had to bring a doctor’s note with her restrictions. Her doctor recommended she lift no more than 20 pounds. UPS told Young that UPS has a policy of no light duty for pregnancy – even though the company provided it to employees injured on the job, those protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to others with conditions ranging from high blood pressure to sleep apnea that prevented coworkers from maintaining a commercial driver’s license.

It’s a good week for residents of Arizona!

Just a few days ago, the Arizona state legislature passed Governor Jan Brewer’s Medicaid expansion proposal, bringing health care coverage to 238,000 low-income Arizonans.

And yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down an opinion that will make it easier for Arizonans to exercise their right to vote.

This morning the Supreme Court decided Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. In this closely-watched case, Arizona residents and civil rights groups challenged a state law that made it harder to vote. The controversial law put the burden on would-be voters to affirmatively prove their U.S. citizenship in order to register.

This law and others like it are serious threats to our right to vote, and they are especially harmful to women voters. Recent studies show that these restrictive voter registration laws disproportionately affect women, who often lack proof of citizenship in their current legal names. Only 66% of voting-age women with access to documents proving citizenship have documents in their current legal names, and only 48% of these women can show birth certificates with their current legal names [PDF]. Women also make up the majority of college students and senior citizens – both populations that are less likely to have qualifying forms of identification. Restrictive voting laws like Arizona’s require these women to jump through hoops in order to register, expending time and money to obtain the necessary documentation.

Image source:Beartooth NBC

There are a lot of different metrics used to rank the states and the District of Columbia. Geographic size, population, and various economic measures are particularly popular. Naturally, I’m sure you’ve wondered how Montana, or “The Treasure State,” compares to all of the other states. Well, Montana is big: it is ranked 4th in geographic size. It doesn’t have too many people, though, and it ranks near the bottom on population metrics: it is 44th in population and 48th in population density. Unfortunately, Montana also ranks near the bottom of all the states, and the District of Columbia, based on its wage gap. Data compiled by the National Women’s Law Center places Montana 43rd in the wage gap rankings: women in the state earn 74.6 cents for every dollar earned by their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.

On the 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, Montana Governor Steve Bullock decided to tackle the wage gap problem head on by creating the Equal Pay for Equal Work Task Force to determine whether there is inequality in pay for women. Montana has an impressive history of advocating for women: Montana women earned the right to vote in 1914, six years before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, and the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, hailed from “Big Sky Country.”