There has been a sizable amount of space afforded to pregnancy-related discrimination in the media this past year. In fact, that’s one of the reasons for this series of pregnancy-related blogs. As such, it is becoming increasingly difficult for employers to escape accusations of pregnancy-related discrimination when it arises. This being said, there are charitable organisations out there that believe that more needs to be done: one of these charities is Maternity Action.
During the past week, Maternity Action have released a report (named “Unfair Redundancies”) calling on the Government to strengthen anti-redundancy protection for pregnancy employees. The most eye-catching statistics quoted by the charity include that 1 in every twenty mothers are made redundant during their pregnancy, maternity leave or return to work and that 77% of pregnant women felt discriminated against during their period of pregnancy.
Before we continue, let’s just dial down into that first statistic for a moment.