User:IonaMink/Maternal wall

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The maternal wall is a term used to describe the discrimination and stereotypes that working mothers encounter within their places of employment. Questions about a mother's capacity to be fully involved in the workforce and participate in childrearing are at the center of this debate. The implications of this rhetoric are detrimental; wages may drop as a result of perceived ineptitude, which makes working mothers vulnerable to poverty.

Legal Implications
The majority of maternal wall lawsuits are filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment. Title VII did not have a clause about pregnancy until it was amended in 1978 to include the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The act states that "an employer may not discriminate against and employee on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions must be treated the same as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work. " Due to limitations in the original clause, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) created clarifying guidelines in 2014 called the Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Guidelines. This outlines the coverage, access to benefits, disparate treatment, disparate impact, disability status and best practices. This legislation ensures that pregnant workers are compensated at the same rate as they were prior to becoming pregnant, which helps to avoid wage penalties.

Court Cases
Successful maternal wall cases must demonstrate that employees are discriminated not because of their sex, but because of their sex role. As such, men can also be discriminated against when they occupy a caregiving and traditionally female sex role. Maternal wall cases also fall under the umbrella of Family Responsibilities Discrimination, which is employment discrimination against workers who have caregiving responsibilities, such as pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children and employees with aging parents. Family Responsibility Discrimination cases have risen dramatically since the 1970s: In the 1970s, only 8 cases were filed, whereas 358 cases were filed between 2000 and 2005. Investigations of these lawsuits show that most involve overt discrimination, and that 92% of the plaintiffs are women. The win rate of Family Responsibilities Discrimination lawsuits is more than 50%, whereas traditional discrimination lawsuits have a win rate of roughly 20%.

Economic theories
Economic theories suggest that occupational and lifestyle choices explain the motherhood penalty. The maternal wall is regarded as a self-imposed barrier, where women expecting motherhood self-select into occupations that require lower levels of skill and education because they anticipate less participation in the labor force over their lifetime. Furthermore, women who choose "home-time" and choose to take leave from the workforce are statistically less likely to achieve higher-earning professional and managerial positions. The argument follows that women are not fully committed to the labor force, thus explaining wage differentials. Similarly, this lack of commitment may explain the motherhood penalty in terms of performance. Economist Gary Becker follows a "work-effort" hypothesis, which suggests that employed mothers do not perform as well as men because of their choices, such as refusing to "work odd hours or take jobs requiring much travel". Alternatively, employers may use statistical discrimination, in which employers use average estimates of productivity to predict the productivity of certain groups. As such, mothers may receive lower wages due to lower estimates of productivity. Other economic perspectives include the taste model, in which employers may find it distasteful to employ mothers.

The motherhood penalty also posits that since childcare and household tasks are not paid labor, women's earning potential is limited This is especially true of single mothers and women who rely on child support payments from absent partners. This reliance means that earning potential is beyond the control of the mother. The combination of low skill jobs, part-time work for flexible hours and lower participation rates in the workforce makes mothers vulnerable to higher poverty rates. Social welfare programs have successfully been implemented in several countries, including Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. These programs help to ease the negative impact of the motherhood penalty.