These days, many job placement agencies claim that looking for a job while pregnant is about the same as looking for a new job at any other time in your life. After all, working moms are more visible than ever before — Jen Psaki was promoted to the top White House communications position while pregnant, and Nada Noaman got her dream executive job at Estée Lauder while pregnant.
In it, Kate Winick was reassured after she was fired from her role as a director at Peloton in April 2023 when she was five months pregnant and “scared.”
“Many people (all men) told me it was fine, companies just want to hire the right people and invest in talent for the long term,” she wrote on LinkedIn on Mother’s Day.
But her experience highlights the grim reality facing unemployed pregnant women: Despite having 15 years of experience, including at editorial giant Hearst, the former Peleton director says she was immediately eliminated from interviews after revealing her pregnancy had.
“100% of the companies I told went ahead with scheduling interviews and declined to invite me for a final round,” she added.
However, women are not legally required to disclose their pregnancy at any point in the interview process because, as a company employee, “we have internalized our existing value system that says pregnancy is a burden, a risk, a loss to the company,” Winick said. she feels obliged to do so. She also didn’t want to “ruin the relationships” she had with recruiters.
“It’s a burden”
Winick’s Mother’s Day LinkedIn post about the toll that childbearing takes on women’s careers has resonated with thousands of users in less than 24 hours.
“Plus I was unemployed and pregnant,” one user commented. “You described it perfectly. It is frightening and, as you say, we are convinced that it is a burden. But some employees are parents…The only place that hired me when they knew I was pregnant was a diversity and inclusion consulting firm.”
“I’ve stopped mentioning that I’m a parent in interviews because I’ve found interest immediately wanes,” another added.
Another said she had to turn down jobs that lacked remote options: “It’s 2024 and we’re still missing the mark miserably when it comes to working mothers.”
Even though the situation for working mothers appears to have changed so much – executives now even proudly list “stay-at-home mom” in their careers on LinkedIn – many said that Winick’s experience highlights that prejudice is still widespread and that It is better for women to hide their pregnancy from recruiters.
Winick herself admitted that the persistence of such prejudices surprised her.
“I was incredibly naive to believe that in 2024 it would finally be possible to become a mother without compromising my career,” Winick wrote. “I don’t know of any woman whose trajectory hasn’t been temporarily or permanently affected.”
change of direction
Since becoming a mother, Winick has taken her career into her own hands and turned to entrepreneurship.
“Post-vacation interviews went back to normal (including a few offers, but not the right one yet) and I was able to build a successful social media consulting practice fairly quickly, which provided me with stable work before and after my maternity leave,” Winick said Assets.
“There are so many women struggling to survive in this situation, I consider myself very lucky.
She pointed to the Labor Club as an “amazing resource” for women who have lost their jobs during pregnancy.
Assets Peloton has reached out for comment.
The motherhood penalty is in full swing
It’s no secret that finding a new job is difficult. Candidates constantly complain about the endless hurdles recruits throw at them to prove they’re a perfect match – from endless rounds of interviews to 90-minute tests and presentations.
But for unemployed pregnant women and mothers, research consistently shows that they face the added challenge of dealing with the old-fashioned opinions of their managers.
According to the equality charity Fawcett Society, around a quarter of a million mothers have quit their jobs in the UK alone in recent years due to “outdated and toxic attitudes to motherhood”.
Women have told it before Assets about their experiences with motherhood punishment, including being compared to a broken down race car and being forced to take part in bathing their baby.
What’s more, expectant women’s experience of toxic prejudice doesn’t end when their baby bump disappears – research shows that outdated stereotypes follow women well into motherhood and have a noticeable impact on their long-term career paths.
Princeton University and the London School of Economics collected data from 134 countries and concluded that the motherhood penalty can still impact women’s careers ten years after giving birth.
It’s no wonder people like Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Allen have confessed that they felt forced to choose between motherhood or professional success.
This story was originally published on Fortune.com