Speaker 1: Imagine you're applying for a job and you get this
Speaker 1: voicemail from the person you just interviewed with joy to
Speaker 1: keep Dr Ross calling how are you? I'm actually had
Speaker 1: the town as you know, I mean Colorado kids man
Speaker 1: on spring break. Um, and they wanted to pay you
Speaker 1: for meeting me onside, and I did want to offer
Speaker 1: you the job. I think would be a great fit.
Speaker 1: A voicemail like that, with an excited sounding boss and
Speaker 1: a job offer is exactly what anyone applying for a
Speaker 1: job can hope for. But then imagine one day later
Speaker 1: you get another very different voicemail from that same person.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, UM, I think just right now,
Speaker 1: I need a couple more days to figure out this position,
Speaker 1: this job position. UM, So I'm not gonna offer you
Speaker 1: a job just I just need a couple more days
Speaker 1: to figure this out. Those voicemails they were left for
Speaker 1: a woman named Nikki LaPoint In early Nikki was applying
Speaker 1: for a new job as an orthodontist assistant. She'd be
Speaker 1: doing similar work, but the job paid a little better.
Speaker 1: It was closer to her home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and that would make it a lot easier for her
Speaker 1: to make it home to her son after work. She
Speaker 1: even knew someone that worked there. One day, Nikki had
Speaker 1: the job, and the very next it was rescinded. So
Speaker 1: what can happen and one day that would change unemployer's mind.
Speaker 1: The doctor had gotten one important new piece of information.
Speaker 1: After that first voicemail, Nikki called back her future boss
Speaker 1: and she told her that she was pregnant. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly how it came up, but I did tell
Speaker 1: her that I just wanted to let her know that
Speaker 1: I did recently find out that I am pregnant with
Speaker 1: my second child. That's Nikki. It didn't feel like I
Speaker 1: didn't get the job because there was a better candidate.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the job because I wasn't qualified. Nikki
Speaker 1: felt that she didn't get the job because of her pregnancy.
Speaker 1: The offer was technically on hold, but in reality it
Speaker 1: was gone. The orthodontist had posted a new ad for
Speaker 1: the job that same day. Nikki tried to work things
Speaker 1: out over email, but eventually the orthodontis stopped responding to Nikki.
Speaker 1: All of this seemed like it might be illegal. Can
Speaker 1: you not hire someone because they're pregnant? So she got
Speaker 1: a lawyer and sent him everything she had, the voice mails,
Speaker 1: some emails, and Steve Smith, the lawyer she found, thought
Speaker 1: that she had a strong pregnancy discrimination case. The case
Speaker 1: was unusual in the sense that you know, I'd say probably,
Speaker 1: you know, once every five to ten years, someone will
Speaker 1: walk in your office with direct, undisputed evidence that looks
Speaker 1: like discrimination. It looked like discrimination to Nikki and her lawyers,
Speaker 1: but the orthodontist argued that her decision to rescind the
Speaker 1: job had nothing to do with pregnant see. She said
Speaker 1: her real concern was what Nikki would do after she
Speaker 1: had the baby and how much time she'd want to
Speaker 1: take off. And it turns out that legally that's not
Speaker 1: pregnancy discrimination. So Nikki lost. For those who want to
Speaker 1: keep working at the same level, getting pregnant and having
Speaker 1: a child often deals them an involuntary setback. Women deserve people.
Speaker 1: People work object helps to keep women not on a ptaphone.
Speaker 1: But in the case, you should never say I'm ready
Speaker 1: to have a baby. Am I'm ready to leave my job.
Speaker 1: There's no single industry where women aren't punished for appropriating.
Speaker 1: When men have children, they experience a pay bump when
Speaker 1: women have children, the opposite happens. Bloomberg crunch the numbers
Speaker 1: and found that Wall Street is the worst when it
Speaker 1: comes to gender pay gas. Gender is no longer the
Speaker 1: factor creating the greatest wage to discrepancy in this country.
Speaker 1: Motherhood is welcome to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. For
Speaker 1: women like Nikki, the motherhood penalty starts even before the
Speaker 1: baby comes. Once a woman gets pregnant, the workplace starts
Speaker 1: to see potential liabilities and inconveniences. Some pregnant women have complications,
Speaker 1: they might have to take time off from their jobs,
Speaker 1: especially if they do something particularly physical. But there's also
Speaker 1: this idea that pregnant women just aren't as productive as
Speaker 1: non pregnant workers. And it's not just their productivity while
Speaker 1: they're pregnant, it's all the things that pregnancy foreshadows. What
Speaker 1: happens after a woman gives birth, she'll probably need to
Speaker 1: take some time off. In America, it will probably be unpaid,
Speaker 1: but even that's costly for employers. They may have to
Speaker 1: find a replacement or forego that person's work for some time.
Speaker 1: And then there's this anxiety that pregnant women have, will
Speaker 1: they be as valuable as before. After all, they'll effectively
Speaker 1: be working two jobs. It would be a lot easier
Speaker 1: for employers if they didn't have to deal with pregnant
Speaker 1: women at all. In fact, women have told us that
Speaker 1: they've been asked in job interviews if and when they
Speaker 1: plan to have kids, because even the hint of pregnancy
Speaker 1: can scare employers and managers away from promoting or hiring
Speaker 1: women around an age where they might get pregnant, and
Speaker 1: thus the motherhood penalty begins. Women like Nikki lose out
Speaker 1: on better paying jobs, Others are sidelined from big projects
Speaker 1: that could lead to raises and promotions, and some are
Speaker 1: pushed out of work altogether. But there are laws that
Speaker 1: are supposed to protect pregnant women from this kind of discrimination.
Speaker 1: I brought in my colleague Claire Stith to tell me
Speaker 1: about those laws and how they did or didn't work
Speaker 1: in Nikki's case. High Claire, Hey, Becca, So let's start
Speaker 1: with the basics. Isn't it illegal to not hire someone
Speaker 1: just because they're pregnant. Yes, that is illegal, or rather
Speaker 1: that's what the law says now, but it didn't always
Speaker 1: say that. Let me back up a bit. The main
Speaker 1: law that outlawed sex discrimination at work was the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act, which President Lyndon Johnson passed in We believe
Speaker 1: that all men have certain unalienable rights, yet many of
Speaker 1: my Oakans do not enjoy those rights. So the part
Speaker 1: of the Act that's relevant here is Title seven. It
Speaker 1: specifically says employees can't be fired or you can't refuse
Speaker 1: to hire them, or demote them, or treat them differently
Speaker 1: just because of their race, religion, color, national origin, and sex. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you can't discriminate based on sex, wouldn't pregnancy
Speaker 1: discrimination fall under that category. It really wasn't clear at
Speaker 1: the time. As we talked about last season, the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act was mainly about solving racial discrimination. The words
Speaker 1: sex got added in at the last minute, and because
Speaker 1: it was an afterthought, the law didn't really establish what
Speaker 1: sex discrimination meant, and it certainly didn't address the issue
Speaker 1: of pregnancy. What legal protections did pregnant women have at
Speaker 1: the time. Well, the attitude at the time was that
Speaker 1: when a woman gets pregnant, she's no longer fit to work.
Speaker 1: It was normal for women to be forced to go
Speaker 1: on leaves of absences and just not get their jobs
Speaker 1: back after they had kids. A woman's main role after
Speaker 1: she got pregnant was to basically be pregnant and then
Speaker 1: a mom, So women were frequently pushed out of paid
Speaker 1: jobs they had to rely on someone else for money
Speaker 1: to live. To be clear, this wasn't the case for
Speaker 1: every job or every person. Like domestic workers, agricultural workers,
Speaker 1: jobs often held by black women, they didn't have these restrictions.
Speaker 1: They were expected to keep working through their pregnancies and after,
Speaker 1: but many jobs still viewed working in motherhood is incompatible. Okay,
Speaker 1: but then the Civil Rights Act comes along and you
Speaker 1: think employers shouldn't be able to force a woman out
Speaker 1: of a job just because she's pregnant. Isn't that sex discrimination? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the question was, how do you argue that in court.
Speaker 1: At the time, feminist legal scholars and attorneys were focused
Speaker 1: on getting companies to treat women equally, pay them the same,
Speaker 1: promote them, you know, treat them the same as you
Speaker 1: would a man. But pregnancy kind of throws a rent
Speaker 1: in that. Idea to argue for pregnancy rights is to
Speaker 1: essentially remind the court that, oh wait, women really are different.
Speaker 1: It's this biological function that's fundamentally what sets women apart
Speaker 1: from men. Yeah, and I can see how that would
Speaker 1: be complicated because, in a way, pointing out how pregnant
Speaker 1: women are different could play into the idea that women
Speaker 1: shouldn't work at all. Well, they had this debate. They said,
Speaker 1: if our main goal is to ensure that women are
Speaker 1: treated equally to men in all respects, how do we
Speaker 1: push for things like maternity leave, pregnancy accommodations, etcetera That
Speaker 1: would require us to argue that sometimes women are different.
Speaker 1: The idea that they eventually hit on was essentially to say, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so women are the only ones who get pregnant, but
Speaker 1: male workers do get sick or hurt or need special
Speaker 1: accommodations too, and when they do, they're often able to
Speaker 1: go on temporary disability. So we should treat pregnancy like
Speaker 1: any other temporary disability and get pregnant women the same
Speaker 1: kind of benefits. This argument allowed attorneys to challenge the
Speaker 1: stereotype that all pregnant women should not work, while allowing
Speaker 1: some pregnant women who maybe had medical complications to get
Speaker 1: the accommodations they needed without getting pushed out of their jobs.
Speaker 1: Here's how Debora Dinner, a llegal historian, and Emery You
Speaker 1: University explained it to me, analogizing between pregnancy and temporary
Speaker 1: disability would force employers to conduct an individual evaluation of
Speaker 1: any pregnant woman's capacity to do her job. So instead
Speaker 1: of treating pregnant women a certain way as a class
Speaker 1: and saying they are or they aren't able to do
Speaker 1: their job, you'd say can they do their job? In
Speaker 1: the same way you would evaluate if someone had a
Speaker 1: sprained ankle whether they could do their job. And the
Speaker 1: landmark case that used this tactic was a lawsuit filed
Speaker 1: by women working at General Electric. They weren't included in
Speaker 1: the company short term disability coverage plan. The case went
Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruled the Title seven of the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: didn't cover pregnant women. That meant that if you were
Speaker 1: a woman who worked at GE and you broke your leg,
Speaker 1: you would get paid time off. But if you got
Speaker 1: pregnant any time you took if they let you take time,
Speaker 1: you'd get nothing. Wow. So how did the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justify that decision? I asked Debra to explain that to me.
Speaker 1: The courts drew this very formalist distinction, And they said
Speaker 1: that the distinction between pregnant and non pregnant persons is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as a distinction between males and females,
Speaker 1: because in the category nonpregnant persons you have both women
Speaker 1: and men. Here's Justice William Wrinklist and sense respondents did
Speaker 1: not otherwise show that the exclusion of pregnancy related disabilities
Speaker 1: had a disproportionate effect on one sex as compared with
Speaker 1: the other. We conclude that respondents are not entitled to
Speaker 1: the relief they see. So the Court said this was okay,
Speaker 1: because it isn't discriminating against women but just pregnant women.
Speaker 1: You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to
Speaker 1: make that logic work. Yeah, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: agreed with you, including Congress. Fairly quickly they start holding
Speaker 1: hearings on the issue, and by they passed the Pregnancy
Speaker 1: discrimin Nation Act that basically thumbs its knows at the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court and says, actually, pregnancy discrimination counts a sex discrimination. Now.
Speaker 1: All the stuff in the Civil Rights Act about how
Speaker 1: you can't fire someone or refuse to hire someone just
Speaker 1: because they're a woman, that now also applies to women
Speaker 1: who are pregnant. It also says that pregnant women need
Speaker 1: to be included in any employee benefit plans. So this
Speaker 1: law didn't solve pregnancy discrimination, right Why not? Well, it
Speaker 1: just says that a pregnant employee has to be treated
Speaker 1: the same as other employees. So it really only works
Speaker 1: if a company offers temporary disability or other types of
Speaker 1: accommodations in the first place. Like remember that UPS case
Speaker 1: that went to the Supreme Court a few years ago.
Speaker 1: It involved this woman, Peggy Young. If Peggy Young had
Speaker 1: sought an accommodation for a twenty pound lifting restriction that
Speaker 1: resulted from any number of conditions, whether required on or
Speaker 1: off the job, UPS would have granted that accommodation. But
Speaker 1: because Peggy Young's twenty pound lifting restriction resulted from pregnancy,
Speaker 1: UPS rejected her request. She was a UPS employee who
Speaker 1: was denied disability accommodations when she was pregnant, like not
Speaker 1: lifting heavy boxes, that sort of thing, even though UPS
Speaker 1: granted them to workers with other health problems like heart conditions.
Speaker 1: Because of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, she won. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like the law is really useful for pregnant women
Speaker 1: who need accommodations and want to keep their jobs. It is,
Speaker 1: and a lot of women who would otherwise lose their
Speaker 1: jobs or their income, it keeps them employed and earning money.
Speaker 1: But it's an imperfect solution because when you get down
Speaker 1: to it, pregnancy is different from these other kinds of
Speaker 1: disabilities we're talking about. Like, when you're quote unquote done
Speaker 1: with being pregnant, your physical experience isn't just, you know,
Speaker 1: miraculously back to what it was before. And the reality
Speaker 1: is that a lot of pregnancy discrimination why women don't
Speaker 1: get hired or would they do get pushed out or
Speaker 1: even treated differently at work. It isn't about women actually
Speaker 1: being physically pregnant. It's often about what companies think will
Speaker 1: happen after they have that baby. Right, Like, Nikki wasn't
Speaker 1: asking for accommodations while she was pregnant. Right, her case
Speaker 1: is different from what we've been talking about. Nikki is
Speaker 1: not being treated differently from men at the orthodontist office
Speaker 1: who have temporary health conditions because hiring someone and having
Speaker 1: them take time off work it's inconvenient. It would be
Speaker 1: easier for the orthodontist if they hired someone who didn't
Speaker 1: have to do that, okay, but you still can't discriminate
Speaker 1: against a pregnant person just because it costs you more money.
Speaker 1: Like there's no special clause saying if this is going
Speaker 1: to be expensive for you, yeah, Like, okay, go ahead discriminate, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, in fact, Justice Stephen Brier said exactly that
Speaker 1: in his opinion in the UPS case, the employer can
Speaker 1: try to justify its refusal by relying on a legitimate,
Speaker 1: non discriminatory reason for not accommodating her. But those reasons
Speaker 1: cannot or nearly consist of acclaim it's more expensive or
Speaker 1: less convened need to add pregnant women to the categories
Speaker 1: of those accommodated. That isn't good enough. Proving that, especially
Speaker 1: in a hiring decision, when a company can cite any
Speaker 1: number of reasons that you weren't a good fit, is
Speaker 1: really hard. Nikki's case is the perfect example of that.
Speaker 1: She had evidence that seemed to show that the doctor,
Speaker 1: in making her hiring decision, was focused on the fact
Speaker 1: that she was pregnant. I mean, the voicemails. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: why you didn't tell me when I interviewed you and
Speaker 1: you were pregnant. You just can't figure that piece out.
Speaker 1: Why you wouldn't tell me that if you didn't hear that.
Speaker 1: The doctor asked Nikki why she didn't mention her pregnancy
Speaker 1: during the job interview. To me, that does make it
Speaker 1: seem like she wanted that information to base her hiring
Speaker 1: decision off of the fact that Nikki was pregnant, which
Speaker 1: the courts say you can't do. But in court, the
Speaker 1: doctor said she actually had a different reason for not
Speaker 1: hiring Nikki. After Nikki got that first voicemail with the
Speaker 1: job offer, she called back and accepted. That's when she
Speaker 1: told the doctor she was pregnant, and in that conversation
Speaker 1: they talked about maternity leave. The doctor asked how much
Speaker 1: time she'd want to take. Nikki said she'd taken twelve
Speaker 1: weeks at her last job, unpaid. The doctor said she'd
Speaker 1: typically only given six weeks, also unpaid. Nikki said she'd
Speaker 1: be open to taking less time, and they ended the
Speaker 1: call without making a real decision on how much maternity
Speaker 1: leaves she would take. But Nikky thought she had a job,
Speaker 1: which is why in that second voicemail where the doctor
Speaker 1: took back the job, it surprised her there was no
Speaker 1: time in any point where I was toldly, this is
Speaker 1: what my office does, this is what I can offer,
Speaker 1: and you know, if that's something that you can do,
Speaker 1: we'd still love to have you or no. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: court said that even though it wasn't a clear cut
Speaker 1: take it or leave it discussion, the fact that the
Speaker 1: doctor mentioned six weeks and Nikki said she wanted twelve
Speaker 1: but could maybe take ten, that was enough to decide
Speaker 1: the job was rescinded because NICKI wanted more leave. At
Speaker 1: this point, I think we need to say that none
Speaker 1: of this leave would have been paid or government mandated,
Speaker 1: because the US has no paid leave laws on the
Speaker 1: books right as a new employee working for a small company.
Speaker 1: What unpaid leave laws do exist, they wouldn't even apply
Speaker 1: to Nikki, or for that matter, anyone who needed medical leave.
Speaker 1: The Family Medical Leave Act, for example, only applies to
Speaker 1: companies with more than fifty employees, and it doesn't even
Speaker 1: kick in until after you've worked full time for a year.
Speaker 1: So basically, offering her any amount of unpaid leave was
Speaker 1: a benefit. So she was able to frame the discussion
Speaker 1: about leave as a disagreement over benefits rather than something
Speaker 1: that was inherently tied up to Nikki's pregnancy, and if
Speaker 1: you think about it, this is the problem with treating
Speaker 1: pregnancy like a short term disability and not what it
Speaker 1: is the beginning of motherhood. This discussion about leave only
Speaker 1: happened because Nikki was pregnant. The employer's anxieties about hiring
Speaker 1: her were because of her pregnancy and what would happen
Speaker 1: after she had the baby. So Nikki's out of a
Speaker 1: job because she was pregnant. Nikki's story is about what
Speaker 1: happens to pregnant women's careers and earnings when companies don't
Speaker 1: want to accommodate their needs because it will be expensive inconvenient.
Speaker 1: But what about pregnant women who don't need accommodations, who
Speaker 1: just want to show up and work. Those women can
Speaker 1: face a different type of discrimination. Employers often have these
Speaker 1: preconceptions about the kind of worker a pregnant woman is
Speaker 1: or will be. Can someone who is pregnant really handle
Speaker 1: the big project? Why give a pregnant woman a promotion
Speaker 1: or more responsibilities if she's just going to go on
Speaker 1: leave soon. Maybe someone without kids is better suited for
Speaker 1: the job. These lights they can be subconscious and subtle,
Speaker 1: or they can be overt, but attitudes like these sideline
Speaker 1: women's careers and stunt their earnings even before they have kids.
Speaker 1: Brittany Noble Jones was working as a TV anchor until
Speaker 1: she was fired in I was really trying to prove
Speaker 1: myself in the newsroom. That's a part of the story
Speaker 1: that you know, I forget. You know, you're learning how
Speaker 1: to balance your professional life. When she got pregnant, she
Speaker 1: had no plans to slow down at work at all,
Speaker 1: but her employer had a different idea. Jordan Holman reports
Speaker 1: when Brittany Noble Jones got pregnant with her first child,
Speaker 1: she had recently landed her dream job as a TV anchor.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, Welcome to w j t D twelve. I
Speaker 1: am Brittany Noble Jones. After years of working her way
Speaker 1: up in newsrooms, first as an overnight studio camera operator
Speaker 1: and then as a reporter in the field, she was
Speaker 1: now one of the faces of the local CBS affiliate
Speaker 1: in Jackson, Mississippi. She had taken the job as an
Speaker 1: anchor know when she had wanted a family, because working
Speaker 1: as an anchor had more predictable hours, a rare thing
Speaker 1: in TV news. I always imagined being a mom on TV.
Speaker 1: But I did not want to be a reporter in
Speaker 1: the field. I didn't want to be, you know, doing
Speaker 1: the five pm news and the six pm news live
Speaker 1: anywhere and you don't know what time you're gonna get
Speaker 1: back home. I really just wanted to be an anchor,
Speaker 1: and I thought that would provide me the opportunity, you
Speaker 1: know that to balance it all. From the beginning, being
Speaker 1: pregnant on the job was rough. Brittany had to sit
Speaker 1: for hours without a bathroom break, and she felt ill
Speaker 1: from morning sickness. She didn't let any of that stop her, though.
Speaker 1: She used the commercial breaks to throw up and then
Speaker 1: went right back on air. All right, did you know
Speaker 1: I have a Hawkeye fans when to start a new
Speaker 1: tradition at the football game at their seasons. But then
Speaker 1: things changed. Brittany started getting bigger. Eventually her pregnancy was
Speaker 1: obvious to anyone watching. She says that around that time
Speaker 1: her boss began to treat her differently. Brittany started to
Speaker 1: feel like she was getting pushed out of opportunities at work.
Speaker 1: She was planning to record a promotional clip for the station,
Speaker 1: then she found out a coworker would do it instead.
Speaker 1: And when she was asked to speak out of breast
Speaker 1: cancer awareness of it, she said one of her managers
Speaker 1: told her not to respond. Then one day that manager
Speaker 1: pulled her aside and set out loud the thing that
Speaker 1: she had been worried about, that she no longer looked
Speaker 1: the way she should for the newscast. I'm the morning anchor,
Speaker 1: so there's this look that they're looking for, right, he said.
Speaker 1: Viewers want to see a beauty queen. Right. So I'm
Speaker 1: pregnant now, I've gained like forty pounds on TV. It's
Speaker 1: all in my face, like I'm it's a struggle to
Speaker 1: just sit there like I'm supposed to be sitting for
Speaker 1: doing a half Plus, our TV news has a pretty
Speaker 1: old fashioned beauty standard and being thin as part of
Speaker 1: the expectation for female anchors. Still, we have seen pregnant
Speaker 1: women on TV news, like Katie tur and Kelly Rippa.
Speaker 1: Katie tur even announced her pregnancy on air. I have
Speaker 1: a baby in my belly officially, Um, I'm tired of
Speaker 1: the tweets asking, so I'm going to announce it. So
Speaker 1: being pregnant on air is a thing into Brittany. Becoming
Speaker 1: a mom should have been an asset to her career.
Speaker 1: Her audience, after all, include lots of moms. She tried
Speaker 1: to make that case to her manager, saying she should
Speaker 1: be doing more public appearances, not fewer. It was about
Speaker 1: thirty four weeks pregnant, and the conversation was like do
Speaker 1: you not notice that I'm not in any of the promos?
Speaker 1: Like do you not know this that I'm not representing
Speaker 1: the station at events? And he's like, oh no, I
Speaker 1: don't notice that. It's it's not a problem. He's like,
Speaker 1: why why should I promote you? I'm like, I'm the
Speaker 1: target demographic, Like, I'm a female, I'm between the ages
Speaker 1: of already for you know, whatever the target demographic you have,
Speaker 1: I'm a mom. When Britney said viewers just see more
Speaker 1: moms like her on TV, her manager told her she
Speaker 1: wasn't a mom yet. What do you mean I'm thirty
Speaker 1: or four weeks pregnant? Like, what do you mean? I
Speaker 1: am not a mom? Prittney felt like this whole argument
Speaker 1: with her boss about whether or not mom should want
Speaker 1: to watch her on TV was about more than just
Speaker 1: her pregnancy. She felt there was something he wasn't saying.
Speaker 1: Brittney is black and she felt like her boss didn't
Speaker 1: see her as someone white viewers would relate to. I
Speaker 1: think it really comes down to who they wanted the
Speaker 1: viewers to be, and I don't think that they saw
Speaker 1: me a black woman. You know, that's a mom. That's
Speaker 1: their target demographic. Even though I'm the morning anchor, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I really was the target demographic for
Speaker 1: for their viewership, of who they wanted their viewership to be.
Speaker 1: And it was clear every day when we would pitch
Speaker 1: stories about race. Jack's, Mississippi's population is more than eight black,
Speaker 1: and more women than men watched local TV news in
Speaker 1: the US, So Brittany did reflect the potential viewers in Jackson,
Speaker 1: even if, as she says, her boss didn't agree. This
Speaker 1: tension wasn't new to Brittany. Brittany thinks her boss viewed
Speaker 1: her as a problem even before she got pregnant, because
Speaker 1: she wanted to cover the black community. She had arrived
Speaker 1: in Jackson with the track record of covering race. She
Speaker 1: was a reporter in St. Louis, and she made her
Speaker 1: name by being one of the first reporters on the
Speaker 1: scene covering the shooting of Michael Brown and Ferguson Missouri
Speaker 1: just went on camera. He just said that the officer
Speaker 1: involved in the shooting was not aware that Mike Brown
Speaker 1: was a potential suft FORCEIX AM. This morning, we're learning
Speaker 1: that police departments across the nation are bracing for a
Speaker 1: large Pinmont forty. We just found out just minutes ago.
Speaker 1: Hopefully there will be new details in Mike Brown case.
Speaker 1: I will keep you updated. She followed the story for
Speaker 1: Moms and One Awards for her coverage. Brittany wanted to
Speaker 1: keep covering those stories about race in the black community
Speaker 1: at her new job. That kind of coverage was part
Speaker 1: of the reason she was hired, but she had trouble
Speaker 1: getting those stories made. She pitched a story about black
Speaker 1: fraternities and sororities in the community, but it was rejected.
Speaker 1: She wanted to do a story on the lack of
Speaker 1: state support for historically black colleges and universities. That also
Speaker 1: didn't get the green light. So Brittany was already at
Speaker 1: odds with her bosses, and then she got pregnant was
Speaker 1: led to more friction. She got to do some pieces
Speaker 1: she cared about, but a lot of her other stories
Speaker 1: sounded more like typical local news fair sounds like a
Speaker 1: good time. Ye'd be a lot of whiskey there. Get
Speaker 1: a pair of ticket lawmakers in Washington, d C. Decided
Speaker 1: to have a snowball fight after a fourth no easter
Speaker 1: hits whole Mississippi weather. That's gonna be a great weekend.
Speaker 1: Credentials really, you know, was one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: considered me for the job. But I don't think they
Speaker 1: took into account the type of reporter that I had become.
Speaker 1: Now the way that I'm reporting has changed. I'm digging
Speaker 1: deeper into topics. I'm investigating things that people really aren't
Speaker 1: talking about yet. And we're in Mississippi. Mississippi is a
Speaker 1: black and white state. Still, all of this caused a
Speaker 1: lot of stress for Brittany, arguments with management, getting pushed
Speaker 1: aside for opportunities, being anxious about how she looked, not
Speaker 1: being able to investigate the story she felt were important.
Speaker 1: She blames the stress in part for what happened next.
Speaker 1: A week after a blow up with one of her bosses,
Speaker 1: she went into labor five weeks early. Her newborn son's
Speaker 1: lungs were underdeveloped, and he was whisked to the intensive
Speaker 1: care unit. She didn't get to hold him right away,
Speaker 1: so that initial bond that the mom gets with her
Speaker 1: baby and just like you're finely here and like to
Speaker 1: hold them and have them into lovelm. I didn't get
Speaker 1: that when Brittany went into labor prematurely as a black
Speaker 1: woman in Mississippi. Here's what she was up against. Black
Speaker 1: women have worst maternal health outcomes than white women, and
Speaker 1: research has found that stress and racism are linked to
Speaker 1: those outcomes. Black babies have the highest infant mortality rates
Speaker 1: among any racial group in the US. On top of that,
Speaker 1: Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate. It's not only
Speaker 1: the baby that faces danger. African American women are also
Speaker 1: three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy
Speaker 1: related causes than white women. Brittany went back to work
Speaker 1: seven weeks after her son was born. Even with her
Speaker 1: new reality at home, she made herself TV ready. She
Speaker 1: lost a lot of weight quickly. She says, she felt
Speaker 1: the need to starve herself to fit in. One thing
Speaker 1: she wanted to do differently, however, was her hair. As
Speaker 1: a black woman, it takes at least two hours to
Speaker 1: achieve the straight hair that standard for TV newscasters. At night,
Speaker 1: she would wash deep condition, blow dry, and wrap it
Speaker 1: before going to work. Then came the hot comb and
Speaker 1: flat iron. She had to be at work at two
Speaker 1: thirty am. Doing all of that had always been a lot,
Speaker 1: but now she had a tiny infant to take care
Speaker 1: of on top of that, so she started to wear
Speaker 1: her hair naturally on air to save time. Her look
Speaker 1: was tidy and feminine. She wore her hair in plaits
Speaker 1: like a crown around her head. Soon though, a manager
Speaker 1: said her hair was unprofessional and it was becoming a
Speaker 1: problem for viewers. When black women wear their hair naturally,
Speaker 1: they're often told it's just not right for the office.
Speaker 1: There were other issues that made life hard. As a
Speaker 1: new mom. She need a place to pump breast milk.
Speaker 1: She was told she could use a storage closet, but
Speaker 1: the storage closet was only unlocked during normal business hours.
Speaker 1: But her shift basically started in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and she needed to pump every two hours. She
Speaker 1: began to feel like she was losing her fight for
Speaker 1: equal treatment. Eventually, she filed an internal complaint for discrimination
Speaker 1: and later filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Speaker 1: Commission under Title seven against her employer, Next Star Broadcasting, Inc.
Speaker 1: Her station's parent company. A month later, Brittany was fired.
Speaker 1: The company said it was for excessive absentee is um
Speaker 1: She had used her sick time to take care of
Speaker 1: her ailing grandfather, but she thinks it was because of
Speaker 1: her complaint, so she filed the second e o C
Speaker 1: complaint for retaliation. The e o C is investigating her claim,
Speaker 1: but hasn't suited Next Star, and an investigation doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean they will. Next Star declined to be interviewed for
Speaker 1: this podcast, but in January, w JTV and Next Star
Speaker 1: released a statement after Brittany went public with her story
Speaker 1: and set her in. Employment was terminated because she didn't
Speaker 1: fulfill her contractual responsibilities after exhausting all available leave time.
Speaker 1: As for Britney's allegations of discrimination, they said, we stand
Speaker 1: by our decision to terminate miss Jones employment and vehemently
Speaker 1: deny all other allegations. What Brittney says happened to her
Speaker 1: is what so many pregnant women are afraid of. That
Speaker 1: they'll be marginalized, seen as irrelevant, or even pushed out
Speaker 1: of their jobs as soon as their colleagues find out
Speaker 1: that they're pregnant. In all kinds of ways. Pregnant women
Speaker 1: are regularly set messages that they don't belong in the workforce.
Speaker 1: They're either too frail, too fat, or too expensive. And
Speaker 1: all of this widens the pay gap, because if you're
Speaker 1: given fewer hours to work, or taken off the promotion track,
Speaker 1: or if you're just seen as less capable, your wages
Speaker 1: take a hit. And this is all before a baby
Speaker 1: even enters the picture. Because all of this anxiety about
Speaker 1: pregnant women is an anticipation for what happens next when
Speaker 1: women no longer have just one job. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a look at how the unpaid work of child
Speaker 1: raising eats into women's earnings and careers. The challenge of
Speaker 1: finding reliable, affordable child care is a huge boulder which
Speaker 1: firmly between women and a million opportunities out there. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Paycheck. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to our show to rate, review, and subscribe. This
Speaker 1: episode was reported and hosted by me Rebecca Greenfield and
Speaker 1: recorded by Jordan Holman and Claire Setteth. This episode was
Speaker 1: edited by Francesca Levy and produced by Samantha Gatzick. We
Speaker 1: also had production help from Jillian Goodman, Janet Paskin, and
Speaker 1: Liz Smith. Our original music is by Leo Sidgen. Pamela
Speaker 1: guests did the illustrations on our show page, which you
Speaker 1: can find at bloomberg dot com. Slash the Paycheck. Francesca
Speaker 1: Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts h