Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

The pregnant pauses by women professionals operate on entirely different dynamics. The women say, these are pauses entirely decided upon by them. Not with any work pressure, and certainly not because of any management misconduct.

This is where the non-essentialist nature of women resurfaces for careful perusal. In the lower economic class bracket, women struggle hard to keep their current jobs, owing to the fact that the manual jobs are the only source of economic sustenance. These are the jobs they rely on to pay the bills, and take care of children. This also leads them to feel the need of confronting the management in case of unjust treatment during pregnancy. The financial factor apart, the women from lower economic strata also do not feel inhibited in claiming discrimination, because often times that’s the last logical resort to attain justice.

In contrast, career professional women in high-profile jobs (television anchors) often tend to underestimate the possible consequences of job loss, one, because they are more certain to get a job back after the ‘phase’ is over, and two, their own reputation is publicly connected with that of their organization (like the masthead rules supreme).

Hence one should not be surprised at statements coming from high profile women professionals today, who even while stepping down from their positions do not ascribe the causes to any sexist organizational structure. They rather prefer to take the onus of decision entirely upon themselves. At times to the extent that they even become defensive.

Just look at ABC “World News Tonight” anchor Elizabeth Vargas’ statement to Philadelphia Inquirer last week, “I'm not a pregnant working mother wronged. I played a crucial and active role in this decision.”

Her need to assert that she had played an active role in this decision is part of a dynamic that has layers within. Before being replaced by 63-year-old Charles Gibson, from a coveted anchor chair position Vargas announced on the television “For now … I need to be a good mother.”

Vargas is forced to play into the stereotypes that foster male domination in an almost invisible manner. By refusing to identify with “wronged” working mother, she affirms the male perspective, that not all pregnant working mothers are wronged if they relinquish the jobs. Or the statement that to be a “good mother” she needed to leave the job, is another vindication of male norms.

In the entire process of assertive positions of privilege, fundamental system of gender oppression remains entirely unquestioned. Why does a woman have to make a decision that will tantamount to her “leaving” the job? Even if the decision is made “actively”, how informed is the decision? Why would not the organization insist that she does not leave the job especially considering that the audience was looking forward to receiving Vargas, a pregnant Vargas with all the warmth? Finally, why would the onus of proving a good parent necessarily lie on a woman? And why becoming a good mother should entail closed door disconnect from one’s profession one so carefully shapes up throughout?

Unlike railroad miners or fast food counter cashier women, high-profile women may not be in desperation of a source of financial sustenance. But exactly like them, they are exploited systematically in the male myth world of a value system of adjudging a pregnant woman as weak, a working woman as bad mother and an assertive working woman as limited conditional resource.