The Daily - The Rampant Problem of Pregnancy Discrimination, Part 2

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

Many women are passed over for promotions and raises when they become pregnant. Part 2 of this series examines the subtle sidelining of pregnant women and mothers in corporate America. Guests: Natalie Kitroeff, who covers the economy for The New York Times, and Erin Murphy, who alleges that she was denied opportunities by her employer, Glencore, once she became a mother. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, part two of The Times' investigation into pregnancy discrimination. The subtle sidelining of pregnant women and mothers in corporate America. America. It's Wednesday, June 27th. Erin, did you always know that you wanted kids?

I would say no. I think there was a point in time where I was going to be much more career-focused and kind of thought, well, maybe the kids' thing isn't for me. Earlier this year, while working on this investigation into pregnancy discrimination, I met this woman, Erin Murphy. Natalie Kittroweth covers the economy for The Times. She works in commodities trading in New York. Basically buying and selling commodities that could be anything from metals or oil or cotton or things like that. Specifically, she works with crude oil traders on a big trading floor, and she coordinates the movement of oil from one place to the other. It's a well-paid job with a six-figure salary

and a bonus in an office tower. And while I was in school, I got this job at a company called Louis Dreyfus. And then she moved to Goldman Sachs, and eventually she landed at Glencore, which is the world's largest commodities trading firm. At first, it feltcore, which is the world's largest commodities trading firm. At first it felt like this is great. I can succeed here.

I can be great here. And things are going well. She's getting good reviews. Excellent reviews. You know, I mean, I was given shares to the company because I was. As a reward. As a reward. to the company because I was— As a reward.

As a reward. So I was being compensated for what I was being told, that I was an excellent employee, I was invaluable, I was helping make my traders successful. I never once was told anything to the contrary. But there was one thing that was less than ideal. But there was one thing that was less than ideal. The oil industry is a very, like, old school boys club.

I mean, if you came to my office and you looked at who the traders were and who the people in power were, you would notice right away they're predominantly white male. And then there's a lot of, you know, regular banter, you know, I guess, locker room talk. So men, they're talking about women. Yes. Yes. I think that I realized early on that if I wanted to be liked, if I wanted to move on, if I wanted to be given opportunities, I had to be okay with it. You know, allow it to happen. Despite all that, she's settling into this job. And in the meantime, things are changing for her outside of work. She gets married. She starts thinking about having kids. And in 2014,

she gets pregnant. And so I was pretty nervous about being pregnant. I was pretty nervous about how that was going to impact my career. So I've waited a long time to tell work. I waited until 18 weeks until I told work. And since I had a very friendly relationship with the head trader of my desk, I pulled him aside and I let him know. I said, I'm having a baby. And I said, I'm 18 weeks long. And he asked, why did you wait so long to tell me? And I said, I'm very concerned that this is going to impact my career. And his response was, well, it won't impact it, but it will definitely plateau it. Plateau it.

That's another, it's a fancy way of saying. Yes. Your career is going to stay where it is now. Yes. I was immediately, I guess, defensive to prove to him that it wasn't going to change me. But in the back of your mind, did you believe him? I think I still had hope. I think I still felt like, well, he doesn't know me.

You know, maybe that happened with other women, but I'm going to work even harder. I'm going to put in 10 times the effort than I've already put in so that I can prove it different. I can prove them wrong, and maybe they'll see. Women can be mothers and have great careers. To me, it was very important that I didn't get, I don't know, stereotyped, I guess. And what is the stereotype that you're afraid of? I think that it's sort of known that once you're a mother— You just did air quotes. I know.

Mother. It's did air quotes. I know. Mother. It's a game changer. It's just you're different. You know, you're not on the same playing field anymore. And I just, I wanted, I thought I could be different. that I would find a way to be able to be a mom, but to also be a woman who would have an amazing growing career. Natalie, what happens to Erin Murphy after she has her baby?

So she has her baby, a boy, and after a few months of maternity leave, she's getting ready to go back to work. And she's arranging everything so that having this kid does not derail her career. She gets child care starting at 7 a.m. Her husband's on board for pickups and sick days. And at the same time, she gets word that a colleague is about to go out on maternity leave. And she sees this as a chance to prove just how committed she is to her job. I just looked at it as, this is great. I'm going to prove to them that having this baby has not changed me.

I wanted to show them that you can still rely on me. Nothing's going to change, you know? And then when she went on her maternity leave, I said, I will cover her. I will do her job. I'll do both jobs. It's fine. So when you go back, you're working even harder than before. Yes. And was there any recognition that you had done the work essentially of two people? And was there any recognition that you had done the work essentially of two people? Not particularly, no. I saw several times other people, other men particularly, or, you know, younger women without children be given opportunities. You know, whether it's like a move to another desk or a move up to a new role. You know, I was seeing this happen all around me, but I was never asked, you know, even though

every year I would put in my review that I wanted more leadership. I wanted to grow my career. I mean, it was in there every single year. It was never brought up to me. And then she decides to have another kid. So in 2016, I got pregnant with my second son. And at one point, there was a BBC article that was published, and it was something about a woman's brain being impacted by pregnancy. And the head trader stood up and looked right at me and, hey, the most read article today on the BBC is how women's brains are impacted by pregnancy. And, you know, loud enough that, I mean, I work in a trading floor, so everybody can hear everything. And it was humiliating.

You know, it was like confirming that as a mother, I was somehow less than. What you're describing is kind of essentially grinning and bearing this behavior. kind of essentially grinning and bearing this behavior. And I wonder if at some point in this second pregnancy, you're more conscious of how all this is impacting you and if you start to feel like doing something more than just tolerating it. You know, when I sat down in my review, you know, I brought up, I said, I haven't really been given any opportunities. And she said that really the only way that I could, you know, increase my earning potential was to move laterally into an operations role like on another desk, which I pointed out, well, that's a lateral move. You know, that's not really growing my career.

And she said, well, you know, you should really think about something like that, though, because as a mom of two, you'll probably feel more comfortable, you know, staying where you are and being comfortable in what you know. Hmm. It feels like this boss is telling you that you're supposed to accept this plateauing even though you've organized your life from everything you've said around making sure that having a family doesn't impact your work, which theoretically you don't even have to do, but you've decided to do. And yet everyone at work is treating you as if you're not in a position to grow. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Erin, is this starting to feel to you like discrimination? It's always felt like discrimination. Always. I mean, I just think that I wanted so badly to not be one of the people impacted by discrimination. You know, like, I just, it was so obvious. I mean, if I talk to any of my female friends in the industry, it's like, yeah, duh, you decided to become a mom. I, I wanted so badly to be somebody who could overcome it and not be impacted by it. And in your mind, you were not able to defy those odds.

No. No. It's just not, does not even seem possible. Hmm. We'll be right back. It sounds like for Erin, this was an accumulation of mostly subtle things, a few not so subtle, but largely subtle things. Abasa's comment about pregnant women, directed her large group of people she happens to be in,

getting passed over for a set of promotions. All these things could definitely signal that a company was discriminating against her for being pregnant. But potentially, they could just signal a poorly organized company, an insensitive company, and not really represent outright pregnancy discrimination. So how knowable is it that a situation like this stems from pregnancy discrimination? It is very difficult to know, but what we did for this story was talk to woman after woman, and we talked to women in very different workplaces. We talked to a lot of white-collar women and blue-collar women. And what we found was the same things kept cropping up over and over again. There was a woman who was doing sales for Novartis

whose boss suggested that she get an abortion after she told him that she was pregnant. There was a woman at Merck who was fired three weeks before she gave birth, even though she'd been a star getting excellent performance reviews before she got pregnant. When you see the patterns that we saw appear, you begin to get the sense that pregnancy becomes a problem for a lot of employers. And you just need to look at the statistics to see that becoming a mom in the American workforce means you're taking a big hit. And what do those statistics show? The data shows that women and men, their salaries rise in lockstep with one another until they have their first kid.

And then men continue to rise and women decline. For men, when you have a kid, you get a 6% pay bump. For women, each pregnancy shaves 4% off of their salary. Some of the problem is not about perceptions. It's about how child care and family responsibilities work in America, which is that women are still doing the bulk of that. And so there are absences from work that explain some of that salary decline when women have kids. Meaning a mom might actually take time off of work, which represents lost wages.

Right. But it doesn't explain all of it. So Stanford researchers sent out 1,200 resumes to prospective employers, and they were all female job candidates. They were identical resumes, except that half of them indicated that the woman was a mother. The managers were twice as likely to call back the childless woman. So why are childless women more attractive to hire to managers than mothers? Wow. So this is where the perception aligns or intersects with the pay question. Because if someone is perceived as a less able worker, then managers will be less likely to hire them, give them pay raises, give them promotion opportunities. Sociologists have found is that when you have this responsibility at home, employers think that that will be the number one priority in your life, and how could you prioritize us, your employer, as much as your kid? And men don't face that perception.

It almost sounds like companies are preemptively punishing mothers face that perception. It almost sounds like companies are preemptively punishing mothers before they're given a chance to show that they, in fact, do want to work hard. They do want to be promoted. Right. Whereas men, when they have kids, companies are giving them a pay raise, right? That's 6% pay bump. What's that about? The sociologists say that comes from the perception that when men have a kid, they are going to be the breadwinner. And they need to be able to care for a family. So it's a boost for them. So everything you're describing seems to be based on a set of assumptions that a mother's productivity declines. Is that actually true?

Yeah, it's not true. The research shows that women don't become less productive when they have kids. In fact, it shows that mothers and fathers are more productive workers. So this isn't based on some very real and rational assessment that all of a sudden mothers are going to start costing the company money because they're not as dedicated. That just doesn't bear out in the research. Natalie, where is Erin Murphy now? So Erin filed a lawsuit against Glencore earlier this month. She's suing for gender discrimination and pregnancy discrimination, and she's still working at the company. It's obviously a little

awkward. Do you think that any of these lawsuits from Otisha, from Erin, that they stand a chance of actually changing the situation for pregnant women and for mothers at work. I think we all watched the Me Too movement happen over the last year, and that is about women not being harassed and not being discriminated against at the workplace. But I wonder if you think that this problem of discrimination against pregnant women and mothers is in some ways more entrenched than that and potentially even harder to counteract. the legal battles, while important, are going to solve this problem. Because what we're talking about is really a cultural understanding of what's acceptable treatment and what isn't, of what's egregiously bad and what's just sort of subtle slights. And until there is a kind of broad reframing, like we saw with the Me Too movement, where, remember, a lot of the behaviors that now we all are agreeing are unacceptable and

egregious, were things that were given a pass before this moment of consciousness raising where, you know, the bounds of what's considered okay have changed, you know, the goalposts have changed. Until we see that kind of fundamental shift when it comes to how corporate America views pregnant people and mothers, I don't think you're going to see a broad kind of change that affects more people than the ones that are covered by these lawsuits. Aaron, has this whole experience felt like your employer, and in some sense a larger world, made you choose? You can either be committed to your career or you can be committed to your family, but not both. Yes. At Glencore, not both. Yes. At Glencore, for sure.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I just, I came in almost six years ago with so much hope and so much, so much to offer. And I honestly feel like I've taken a step backwards. I can't not say anything anymore. I can't be silent anymore. Being silent is allowing this to happen. Erin, thank you very much. Thank you.