Mothers on the Job - Lise Vogel

Women's increasing
demands for protection and benefits in the workplace, especially with
regard to maternity leave, have sparked more than a century of
controversy among feminists on how best to serve the needs of working
women. This debate continues to divide the feminist community. One side
believes women are better served by emphasizing equality with
men--pregnancy should be treated like any other ""disability.""
The other
side wants to recognize difference--special provisions should apply
only to pregnant women. Lise Vogel examines the evolution of this debate
on pregnant women in the workplace, looking at theoretical as well as
practical implications.
Vogel
begins by assessing the history of the contemporary debate on pregnancy
policy in the U.S. Since the middle of the nineteenth-century, American
women have been torn by the contradictory demands of motherhood and the
workplace. Pregnancy was grounds for dismissal from work and few
employers took action to protect pregnant workers. To counter this,
early twentieth-century feminists and reformers emphasized female
specificity and women's special role.
In
the 1960s activists adopted a strategy framed on equality, which moved
away from the earlier emphasis on differences. The use of equality
strategies to cover the female-specific phenomenon of pregnancy turned
out to have problems. Now women's special needs were denied and ignored.
These difficulties and a series of court cases in the 1980s triggered
debates in the feminist legal community. Vogel looks at the litigation
and debates, which pitted advocates of gender-neutral strategies against
critics who called for female-specific policies.
Vogel
argues that, in terms of practical benefits, women will be served best
by a gender-neutral approach to pregnancy policy. She encourages
equality advocates to recognize the inherent diversity of individuals,
and points out the need to be sensitive to individual factors of race
and class, as well as sex.