Do you know a pregnant colleague? Have you already drawn negative conclusions about her intentions, abilities, basic competence, and general character? Hold the phones, you’re probably being a dick. Here’s how not to.
It’s 2015 and in spite of baller strides in human perfection, women are often still the Rodney Dangerfields of public perception: They get no respect. This is especially true for working mothers, who still face an incredible amount of real discrimination, which begins the moment a woman announces her pregnancy and is then forced to perform at high speed while still making sure everyone else feels good about her competence, body, hair, outfits and general demeanor.
This is especially true with pregnant politicians, and in a piece at The Guardian, Laura Bates looks at some of the recent comments surrounding the pregnancy of Rachel Reeves, Labour member of Parliament who intends to keep doing her job even though she’s going to reproduce. Working while pregnant is about as scandalous as keeping your name after getting married, yet people still have a lot of Feelings about it. Bates writes:
To read some of the comments and think pieces about this revelation, you might be forgiven for thinking that she had admitted an ambition to make bonfires of taxpayers’ money.
The “stupid woman” is “setting the case for working women back by about 50 years” according to one column. Another spits that she is “treating motherhood as a part-time obligation, almost a hobby”, is not “fit to represent women” and should be disqualified forthwith from “ever making important policy decisions affecting women”. Fellow MP Andrew Rosindell fretted that she might not be able to give the job her “full attention”, arguing that “people need to be put in the positions they can handle.”
First, I really hope that guy never experiences kidney stones, the human man’s closest proxy to giving birth. Second, Bates offers a set of seven questions for anyone who “might still find the very common act of reproduction a bewildering minefield” to consider before rushing to judgment about a pregnant woman’s ability.
But before we get to that, I want to mention that it isn’t just men who find themselves making judgments about a pregnant colleague’s commitment to work. It’s other women, too.
In a recent piece here about Katharine Zaleski, the president and co-founder of a placement company that connects tech women to jobs they can do remotely, we became more acquainted with the kinds of snap judgments women can often make about other women, which ranged from questioning the commitment of a mother who couldn’t meet for post-work networking drinks due to family obligations, to doing nothing to suggest that it was wrong to fire a coworker before she got pregnant so they didn’t have to deal with the headache.
I think this is in large part due to the fact that successful women have had to internalize the workplace values set by men, values which are distinctly sexist with regard to how workers are valued, how leaders are determined, and how family life can factor in to a successful employee’s image. When some women manage to succeed in these male-determined settings, they may pat themselves on the back for successfully mimicking male values and behavior. The trouble is, this becomes the standard by which everyone is held to, and they may directly or inadvertently perpetuate it themselves as bosses. Seriously, did we learn nothing from 9 to 5 and its ingenious ideas for flexible schedules and work-life balance for working mothers?