Maternal Profiling
By Dannie • May 1st, 2008 • Category: Family LifeIt is hard to imagine in today’s society that a woman would be refused a position within a company all for the fact of being a mom. You would think as far as we have come to build an equal balance between men, women, and life that this would not be an issue that still continues today. It does and it is called maternal profiling. Many companies will not offer women positions all for the fact they are mothers, regardless if they are the right candidate.
Still in today’s society, many companies view mother’s as the primary care-taker of children within a two-parent home. Due to this assumption, employers suspect mother’s will be away from work: for doctor appointments, to care for a sick children, and due to school not being in session. There is also the stigma that still follows women in general - that they are not as dependable as their male counterparts.
A recent article on ABC News gives me one more reason to bring this subject to light. Maternal profiling happening to women not just because they have the role of mom, but because they have the role of mom and children would be added to their health benefits. Unbelievable! Not hiring a single mother because her children would be too expensive to have health coverage on.
Struggling through adversity is something that women have done for all of history. I would have hoped that we would have been beyond this type of profiling today. It is unfortunate that as a society, we still seem to put a price on the heads of our mothers. A price of “too much to deal with,” instead of the “price we are worth.”
Have you been a victim of maternal profiling? Would you like to share your story on maternal profiling? Leave a comment or contact us!
This is an original The Parent Spot post.
Dannie is a busy mom of a two. At 12 and 7, her two kids keep her on her toes. In addition to her children, she spends her time between a full-time corporate job and returning to school after a long hiatus. Blogging has become a passion of Dannie's and allows her to keep some sanity by reaching out to others to both offer advice and to also learn from her readers.
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Here is an article that appeared in the Allentown, PA newspaper THE MORNING CALL. Pennsylvania is the HOME OF MATERNAL PROFILING The link to it is:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-bias-031708-lauer,0,7706748.story
In all likelyhood, the legislation that has been introduced for the 8th consecutive year will die at the end of this session. Sen. John Gordner, chairman of the Labor & Industry Committee, in quote to another newspaper, said he is not bringing this bill forward to his committee for a vote. Ladies, Mothers - we need to take a stand. If you live in Pennsylvania, call Senator Gornder and your local senator and ask them to move SB280 Today! Wouldn’t that be a great Mother’s Day Gift to ourselves - EQUALITY IN JOB INTERVIEWS! Thank you - Kiki Peppard
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-bias-031708-lauer,0,7706748.story
themorningcall.com
Mom fights for law against ‘maternal profiling’
By Kathy Lauer-Williams
Of The Morning Call
March 17, 2008
When Kiki Peppard applied for a secretarial job, her prospective employer asked if she was married and had children. After the single mother of two answered, she was told she wouldn’t be hired because she would cost the employer too much in health insurance.
At her next interview, the same questions come up and the Monroe County mom was turned away again because, she was told, “mothers take too many days off.”
But the biggest surprise for Peppard, 53, of Effort, was learning this type of questioning is not against the law in Pennsylvania.
Employers can and do ask questions about marital and family status and make decisions based on the answers.
Peppard said in more than a dozen job interviews in a row, she was rejected because she was a single mother. She ended up supporting her two children with temporary work supplemented by welfare and food stamps.
“It’s Pennsylvania’s dirty little secret,” Peppard said. “I was forced into poverty because of an archaic law.”
Federal laws prohibit discrimination based on sex, age, race, religion, national origin and disabilities, but not marital or family status.
Pennsylvania is not the only state where questions about marital and family status are allowed. In 28 states it is legal for interviewers to ask job applicants questions about their marital status, family plans and caregiving responsibilities. Neighboring states New York, New Jersey and Maryland are among the 22 states that have laws making such questioning illegal.
There is some protection in the Lehigh Valley. A handful of municipalities including Allentown and Easton have statutes saying employers can’t discriminate based on marital and family status. For a decade, state legislators have submitted a bill that would make such protections statewide, but it hasn’t been brought to a vote.
Some business owners say there does not seem to be much interest in the issue, and they are concerned the bill could open up businesses to more lawsuits.
According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Sociology, mothers are 79 percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers with equal resumes. A Cornell University study found that mothers were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-mothers with the same resumes and job experience, while fathers were offered $6,000 more.
And the impact is huge. Mothers make up 46 percent of the labor force, and 71.9 percent of mothers with children under the age of 18 work.
“I have talked to mothers who denied the existence of their children to get jobs,” said Peppard who now works as a switchboard operator at East Stroudsburg University. “Women even have been asked during interviews if they are planning on getting pregnant.”
Harrisburg lawyer and mother Lisa Matukaitis graduated at the top of her law class but didn’t land a job for more than a year because, she said, employers viewed her being a mom as a burden.
“Those kinds of questions came up repeatedly,” she said. “They asked how can you be a good lawyer and a good mom? I was clearly qualified but the fact I had a young child disqualified me. I saw jobs go to young men and women without children.”
She finally took a lower-paying paralegal position before deciding to open her own practice handling family discrimination cases.
Peppard has been advocating for a change for more than 10 years. In 2006, a newspaper article featuring Peppard spawned the phrase “maternal profiling,” a phrase that had such resonance that it became a buzz word of 2007, according to lexicographer Grant Barrett. Maternal profiling made an appearance in this presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton pledged in January to tackle it.
Last month, Peppard’s story went global, when she was interviewed on BBC radio and a story about her cause appeared in The Guardian, a national newspaper in Britain, where maternal profiling is illegal.
Peppard’s battle began in 1994, when she started her job search in Pennsylvania, after moving from Long Island. Her husband had left her and she was supporting her children, James and Carissa, then 14 and 11.
“I had great references and experience,” she said. “But the first question was always, “Are you married?’ and the second was, “Do you have children?’ Then, I would be told, “We don’t hire women with children because they take too much time off work.”‘
At one interview, a lawyer told her that if he did hire her, he’d pay her a lower hourly wage than other employees, because he’d have to pay benefits for her family.
Furious, she contacted the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to file a complaint and was told there is no federal or Pennsylvania law prohibiting questions about marital or family status. She also learned Pennsylvania employers may refuse to hire or promote women or men with families, even if their responsibilities do not interfere with their work.
“They said they couldn’t do anything unless I could prove a man had applied for the same job and wasn’t asked the same questions,” she said.
Peppard discovered the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, which oversees hiring practices, had been amended to protect against discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex and disability since its inception in 1955, but not for marital or family status.
Ten years ago, Peppard found allies in Rep. Craig Dally, R-Northampton, and Sen. Jane Orie, R-Allegheny. They sponsored a bipartisan bill, which this session shares the same number — 280 — in the House and Senate. The bill would amend the Human Relations Act to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations on the basis of family and marital status. The Human Relations Act now bars housing discrimination based on family status.
For a decade, the bill has died in committee, never advancing to the floor for a vote, only to be resubmitted. The bill has eight months to be brought out of committee for a vote this year or it again dies.
Peppard and her supporters are frustrated. At a rally in Harrisburg in October, Peppard spoke in the Capitol Rotunda in front of a clothesline filled with onesies — one-piece baby outfits — spelling out “Give Moms Rights.”
“A decade is a long time to have legislation sitting,” Orie said at the rally. “It’s time we changed this outdated and outmoded law.”
The issue has been gaining steam as organizations such as Pennsylvania Commission for Women; the National Organization for Women; 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women; and Business and Professional Women get behind it. Moms Rising, a national group that promotes mothers’ rights, featured Peppard’s story in its “Motherhood Manifesto” book and documentary.
Joan Blade, co-founder of Moms Rising, said Peppard has been “hugely influential” and brings a “very clear and consistent voice” to the struggle to get Senate Bill 280 passed.
“It’s a priority to get this passed because it would start things on a roll,” she said. “That’s why we open our documentary specifically with Kiki’s story because it is so important.”
Dally said the bill now stands a better chance of passing because there are 50 new members in the state House and Senate. “This process has gone on far too long without any action,” he said. “This measure should have been law a long time ago. It’s common sense. Hiring decisions should be made on qualifications and work, not martial status.”
Peppard said it’s not lack of support that stalls the bill but inaction by Sen. John Gordner, R-Columbia, who won’t bring it out of committee.
“Even if we have enough votes on board, it’s useless if we can’t get it out of committee,” Peppard said.
Gordner, chairman of the Labor and Industry Committee, represents all of Montour, Snyder, Northumberland and Columbia counties and parts of Dauphin and Luzerne counties. Gordner did not respond to requests for an interview. He told National Public Radio in 2006 that he felt that few constituents were concerned about the issue because his office hadn’t received many calls.
Gene Barr of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry echoed Gordner, saying the issue of maternal profiling is “not something that has been brought to us as a problem in the workplace.”
Business owners are worried that passage of the bill would increase the possibility of litigation, Barr said. “We don’t think anyone should be discriminated against, but we are a little concerned that the bill would give people another reason to sue,” he said.
Peppard says another concern she has heard from some legislators is that people in same-sex relationships could be covered under the bill because discrimination on the basis of marital or family status would be illegal.
Rep. Mike Carroll, D- Luzerne/Monroe, and Rep. John Siptroth, D-Monroe/Pike, attended the Harrisburg rally in support of the bill. “It’s very important that this be passed,” Siptroth said at the rally.
Every year when the legislative session closes in November and the bill dies, Peppard wears a black dress in mourning. This year she hopes to wear a red dress. “It would be the best Christmas gift a mother could ask for,” she said.
So Peppard continues to fight. She writes letters, makes phones calls, distributes petitions and even has been trying to pique the interest of Oprah Winfrey. And despite Clinton’s public stance, Peppard has gotten no response to letters sent to the senator’s office. Nor has she gotten a response from Barack Obama.
“When I started doing this, my daughter was in seventh grade and I thought it would be passed by the time she was in high school,” Peppard said. “Now, she has graduated from college and has been working two years, and it’s no closer to passage.”
In January, Peppard’s first grandchild, a girl, was born. “I thought, she’s going to be discriminated against if the bill is not passed,” Peppard says. “How sad to be born into a state where she doesn’t have rights because she has ovaries.”
kathy.lauer@mcall.com