Tausende von Frauen, die Mutterschaftsurlaub nehmen, verlieren trotz gesetzlicher Schutzungen Arbeitsplätze: Bericht
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/article-maternity-leave-protections-women-job-losses-report/
Tausende von Frauen, die Mutterschaftsurlaub nehmen, verlieren trotz gesetzlicher Schutzungen Arbeitsplätze: Bericht
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/article-maternity-leave-protections-women-job-losses-report/
9 Kommentare
This wasn’t an article I was expecting today. It inspired me to read the report from Moms at Work; I’d recommend both this Globe piece and [the report](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vcOi5-b0cRxfY8ly5_bf3otxGR_LUxnO/view). Here are some highlights.
> A new survey from Moms at Work, a community and advocacy organization for working mothers, found 15 per cent of Canadian women who take maternity leave are dismissed, laid off or have contracts not renewed during pregnancy, during their leave or upon their return. That adds up to 25,000 women a year, three times the layoff rate of the general population, says Moms at Work founder Allison Venditti, a career coach and human-resources consultant.
and
> The Moms at Work survey also found that 26 per cent of respondents made less money after returning from their leave, 80 per cent lacked clear direction on how their return to work would be handled and more than 40 per cent considered quitting upon their return. “The ‘Motherhood Penalty’ continues to widen the gender wage gap, reduce workforce participation, and limit women’s leadership opportunities, undermining gender equity and economic growth,” the report states.
and
> In a 2020 paper, Dr. Hirsh and her team studied about 160 workplace discrimination cases brought by caregivers to human-rights tribunals. They found two main sources of conflict: Cases where caregivers were asking for specific accommodations and those where anti-caregiver bias was the perceived reason for certain decisions. The team found that cases where workplaces were accused of a bias were less likely to get an outcome. “It’s just really hard for workers to prove, or to identify, motherhood bias as the reason for certain decisions,” Dr. Hirsh said. She added that the idea that mothers are less productive, which often feeds these biases, is not founded in research. “Employers will couch their decisions in performance terms,” she said. “There is very weak evidence for this.”
Really no great solution. Taking a year off work and coming back with a priority change in your mentality is hard to bounce back from.
Maybe 3 months minimum severance or something would help
Happened to a friend. She came back and had been demoted. Went to the HRT and won a settlement that was well worth her time.
It’s so fucked up to lay someone off on mat leave. „Hey let’s knowingly put this family in a difficult financial situation just as their living costs are about to balloon!“
Hmmm…
Related to this, consider this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/birth-rate-population-decline/683333/?utm_source=apple_news
That article and some of the ideas expressed here seem to be in issue.
It’s worth thinking about the two together.
There’s only one world folks and it’s all inter-related and connected.
Because their bosses just come up with other reasons and the enforcement mechanism for enforcement of labour laws tends to be weak
.
Also, in respect of this matter, get a good education and get hired by the better employers (say like governments) where this kind of horseshit is less common.
I can see this kind of thing happening at some of my prior employers. Not a woman and I don’t know how things went exactly, but jeez louise, I remmber hearing some of the stories of past women who had children. Coming back to work a couple of days after giving birth (or was it 24 hours? Something wild like that).
I guess if your position is that women aren’t humans and shouldn’t have the full range of opportunities and choices, well, then that follows, but I’m not sure that that’s how things ought to be. I certainly don’t agree.
I still have no clue why the birth rate is declining.
Is that because we punish working womans who decide to have kids? Is that because we punish people from having bigger families through punishing housing costs? Is that because you need to study longer and accumulate debt to have a decent job, then reducing the period of time where it make sense to have kids?
Yep, it’s really hard to understand why the birth rate is so low.
What legal protections are they referring to because each province has their own Employment Standards Act and federally regulated companies also have their own regulations when it comes to parental and pregnancy leave.
The main legal protection is that you can not be fired or let go during your leave period and you will be given your position back or one similar to it once your leave ends. There are also legal protections against reprisal.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be fired or released from your job after you return for normal reasons. You don’t get some type of golden shield that stops a company from letting you go or operating normally once you’re back.
This is why you should always stay in contact with your employer while on leave to a certain degree so that you know what is going on. This also helps you keep legal conversations in email so that in the event that if they do do something against the ESA then you have proof they were acting against your legal rights depending on what they say.
Also, I find it weird that they included contract work in these counts… If your contract ends during your leave, they have no legal requirement to sign a new contract with you. A company can not be forced to sign a new contract and that would have been up to you and your employer to figure out before or at the time your contract ended.
The fact it was only 15% while including numbers from normal and legal releases that’s actually a lot better than what I was expecting.