Employment Law

Researchers at Harvard Business School (HBS) and Hunter College recently issued a report based on their survey of more than 25,000 HBS graduates on issues related to work, family responsibilities, and the gender gap in senior management positions in the workplace. The study concludes that these highly educated and ambitious professional women are and have been “leaning in,” well before Sheryl Sandberg coined the phrase, despite having significantly more childcare responsibilities than their male peers. Yet, these women have not earned senior management roles at the same pace as their male counterparts. These results make clear that gender discrimination is still rampant in the workplace, even in the upper echelons of corporate America.

The survey showed that HBS men have been given more powerful leadership roles than their female counterparts. Specifically, the men were significantly more likely than women to have direct reports, profit-and-loss responsibility, and positions in senior management. However, the gender gap between men and women cannot be explained by the conventional wisdom that women “opt out” of ambitious career tracks to be home with their children. Approximately 74 percent of HBS women in Gen X (ages 32 to 48) are working full time, and of both Gen X and Baby Boomers (ages 49-67), only 11 percent of women surveyed stayed at home full-time to take care of their children. Interestingly, these figures are almost identical to a study conducted almost two decades earlier by Deloitte & Touche, which showed that 70% of women who left Deloitte continued to be employed full time and fewer than 10% were out of the workforce to care for children.

Just over 36 years ago, on October 31, 1978, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”) was signed into law, extending the protections of Title VII to pregnant women. This summer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) issued new enforcement guidance on pregnancy discrimination, explaining how both the PDA/Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act provide protections for pregnant women in the workplace.

While much of the response to the EEOC’s new enforcement guidance has focused on the provisions that require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant women, another important aspect of the guidance – one that affects both men and women – has received substantially less attention. In the new guidance, the EEOC clarifies that under Title VII men and women are entitled to parental leave on an equal basis. To be precise, “similarly situated men and women” must receive parental leave “on the same terms.” What does this mean? It means that any leave provided to a new mother that extends beyond the “period of recuperation from childbirth” must also be provided to a new father. In other words, any leave provided for the purpose of bonding with a child or providing care for a young child – as opposed to leave that is provided for the purpose of recuperating from childbirth – must be provided equally to men and women. Moms and dads get the opportunity to bond with and care for their babies.

Articles Posted in Employment Law

Harvard Business School Study Shows that Subtle Gender Discrimination in Workplace Can Lead to Significant Disparities in Senior Leadership Roles

The Federal and Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination Agencies Both Say That Parental Leave Must Be Provided Equally to Men and Women