Newsflash: 'Europe' Is Not a Working Mother's Paradise

This piece in the NY Times, 'Pregnant and Unemployed' about the employment discrimination faced by pregnant women elicited a lot of empathy from me. The writer, Erin Keane Scott, moved to Pittsburgh with her husband when he changed jobs, found herself unexpectedly pregnant and soon realized that pregnant women are not attractive hires for most employers. 

I can empathize because I have also been in the position - and still am - of relocating to support a spouse's career and having my own career suffer as a result. It's not pleasant when family and career get into a messy, head-on collision. 

One point raised by Erin Keane in this piece did give me pause, however. She writes: 

It’s worth noting that the United States is one of only four countries in the world that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave. Many countries in Europe and Canada offer at least 26 weeks of paid parental leave. 

I find it hard not to feel let down by our system. 

This theme of Europe as a working parents' paradise crops up regularly in the NY Times' parenting blog, Motherlode, too. Most recently, this post on 'maxed-out moms' ends with the comment: 

Mothers and fathers [...] should stop apologizing and start talking about the sorry cultural, societal and political choices that leave us, too often, with no chance of making it all work.

It brings me no joy to report that Europe is not the mothers' paradise Americans like to imagine. Although laws may be in place to protect women's maternity rights in most European countries, in practice many employers continue to discriminate. 

In countries like the UK, where the 'pro-business' culture (aka Americanization) is strong, you only get paid maternity leave if you have worked for the employer for at least six months and even then it is only paid (at 90% of your salary) for 6 weeks. After that, you receive a further 33 weeks at a standard stipend rate of about $200 per week. Obviously $200 per week is better than nothing but it would not cover the loss of most women's income considering that the average income in the UK is about $40,000 per year. 

In the case of this writer, if she had been job-hunting while pregnant in the UK, she would still not have been entitled to any paid time off if she had been hired while already more than four months'  pregnant  She would have been entitled to maternity leave of up to 39 weeks but only paid the maternity allowance rate of $200 per week. Again, this is better than nothing but would not meet expenses for most households.

In countries like Germany, where maternity leave is generous and employers are not allowed to make pregnant employees redundant, employers often just don't hire women of child-bearing age to avoid the issue completely.

When I worked in Germany, it was very rare to encounter women in senior management positions and when I did meet female high-fliers, they invariably had no children, as is the case with Germany's highest-flying female, Angela Merkel. It was prejudice against mothers that seemed to block the progress of German women in the workplace, not outright sexism.

Here in the US, I see women in senior management positions all the time, even those with large family commitments. It seems here that if a woman is willing to work and make the commitment required for a senior-level job, employers are happy to give her that opportunity. 

The bigger problem I have encountered here has been lack of access to affordable, good quality childcare. In some states, there is no regulation on childcare at all so working parents have no peace of mind when it comes to the care of their children. In other states, like California, childcare costs are prohibitively high.

It is definitely hard to get hired if you're pregnant. That is an even bigger problem in a moribund economy, however, and currently Europe's economy looks a lot more moribund to me than the US.