Discrimination....

I've experienced a few types of discrimination in my life.   I've been sexually harrassed, I've been looked down upon due to my social class, and I've been demeaned simply because I was a female.  Usually, I handled such situations with grace and optimism.  Such discrimination bothered me, but it didn't bother me that much.  However, I recently experienced a different type of discrimination.  This time, it really bothered me.  In fact, it angered me, frustrated me, and filled me with fear because it didn't just affect me.  It affected the quality of life of those closest to me--my unborn child and my husband.  Let me explain.

Since I announced my pregnancy at the college where I teach, I informed my supervisors on numerous occasions that I wished to be full-time.  I also, obviously, wished to maintain my current salary.  However, the overall supervisor, the official determinor of my workload this Fall, emailed me a couple of weeks ago asking me to call her.  She wanted to "discuss" my maternity leave with her.  I called her the very next day.  As I spoke with her on the phone, I was determined to be as polite and conciliatory as I could be. During the call, she began by saying she didn't want me to teach classes in the Fall because she didn't want my leave "to disrupt the students' experience."  I said fine and suggested various alternatives.  She shot down every one of them.  Then, she mentioned as an aside that the only alternative available was part-time.  And did I mention that it was at less than half my salary?  I informed her that I wanted to be full time and that I wanted full pay. She abruptly hung up on me, even though I repeatedly requested to ask just one more question before she did so.  

After she hung up, I sat there in shock.  My first reaction was to find a way to accept the reduced pay, but I couldn't.  There is no way that my husband and I could survive on his graduate assistant's salary and the meager pay she had mentioned in the phone call.  I began to panic.  Then, I started thinking about it.  I had read about pregnancy discrimination, but I wasn't sure if this was actually such a case.  From there, I decided to be proactive.  I visited the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's website, I looked up lawyer referalls, and I read the 1978 Act on pregnancy discrimination.  This is where I discovered the following language:  "(k) The terms 'because of sex' or 'on the basis of sex' include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work, and nothing in section 703(h) of this title shall be interpreted to permit otherwise." The Act then goes on to say: "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -...(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (Source).  Note the underlined and italicized language. Reducing my pay by more than half and cutting my hours in half would definitely be construed as an "adverse effect."

So, I had a case. But I'm not a litigious person. I don't want to go to court. I want to head this problem off, to nip it in the bud before it becomes uncontrollable. After reading the relevant parts of the Act, I thought about what I should do. Should I wait and see if she actually tried to do what she mentioned? She spoke about it in such a way that she was obviously trying to avoid such legal action. I decided it was time to grow a backbone. The best thing to do was to bring it all out in the open through a polite and forceful letter. I sent her an email phone record stating exactly what I heard her say, and I politely mentioned that cutting my wages and forcing me to work part time might warrant legal action on my part. In short, I played the blinking game with her. Who would blink first? She did.

She emailed me back claiming that she only had my best interests at heart by suggesting part time work. Apparently, according to her, a lot of pregnant women want to work part-time during their final trimester. I informed her that I wasn't one of those women. If I really wanted to work part-time due to pregnancy-related issues, I would have asked for it during the first trimester when I was worshiping the porcelain god every day.

My college still hasn't decided what they are going to do with me. At first, I was worried about it. I offered alternatives and I made suggestions. I did everything I could to be as helpful as possible. But after this situation, I fully consider it to be their problem.

Being pregnant is not a disability. I can be just as effective as a professor even if I am pregnant. But this brings up a few questions for me. What do pregnant public school teachers do? And why haven't I met another pregnant college professor in my multiple years in higher education? I don't know. The whole situation still leaves me with uncertainty and doubt, not only for my family's future, but about academia as a whole and its role as a bastion against inequality and discrimination.