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ABC News taps anti-feminist activist to explain why pregnancy discrimination is OK

Jill

A guest-post by Kate.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but if I did, this is the kind of a story that I’d expect from the likes of FOXNews: A counter-trend segment on how the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is bad for women. So imagine my surprise (and terror) when I found out this ridiculous piece was airing on main stream media by the normally more level-headed ABCNews.

In a preview for Friday’s 20/20 show, published today on ABCNews.com, Stossel makes the argument that there’s a new trend emerging of women who say that the new law keeps women down. And who are these self-loathing pregnant ladies? Well there’s really only one — Carrie Lukas, vice-president of the fringe conservative anti-women group, Independent Women’s Forum.

“If my employer decides they no longer want me as an employee, then it should be their right to fire me,” said Lukas in the piece. “I understand the desire for people to have the government step in and try to protect women, but there’s real costs to government intervention.”

According to Carrie, those costs are that because there’s now a law, employers might worry about being sued if they break it, and therefore be hesitant to hire women. Tell me if I’m wrong here, but I was under the impression that that check and balance system was the entire basis of our civil rights in this country.

Lukas’ argument, that women don’t need laws to protect them because their viability as candidates should speak for itself, has a long history in the women’s movement. It was the same excuse used by Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP-ERA cohorts in the ’70s to shut down the Equal Rights Amendment. Apparently, through Lukas and her ilk, it’s an argument making a comeback. To base an entire argument around Lukas is the reporting equivalent of doing a trend piece saying there’s an increasing contingent of people who don’t like living in houses, and then interviewing a homeless person.

I used to work for ABCNews — and in fact, wrote a pretty feisty piece on equal pay for them back in 2006, so I hope this isn’t some huge shift in company policy. Nonetheless it seems like plain old bad journalism to claim a trend in pro-pregnancy firing in the workplace piece around one woman — anti-feminist Carrie Lukas, no less — and call it news.

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Kate is a political blogger and reporter who works and lives in Brooklyn. She has written for Talking Points Memo, The Washington Independent, Columbia Journalism Review and The Guardian, among other outlets. Follow her @itscompliKATEd on Twitter.

30 thoughts on ABC News taps anti-feminist activist to explain why pregnancy discrimination is OK

  1. That makes sense from Stossel and 20/20. The guy’s a hardcore Objectivist, so anything less than complete laissez-faire corporate excess is a blasphemous violation of our “rights” (since the right to operate a business in whatever racist, sexist way one wants somehow triumphs the right to not be discriminated against by a business.).

  2. But Carrie Lukas is “Independent”! It’s right there in the name! So she must know better than the hordes of brainwashed feminists thinking in lockstep!

  3. So the general conservative mindset is, in order to deserve anything in life (food, health care, shelter, labor-saving devices, technology, et cetera), you’re supposed to work.

    And now here they’re saying that employers should have the right to be as selfish as they please, that the instant they think you likely to inconvenience them with need for medical leave they can toss you out, and not only that but every other potential employer can (and likely will) see things the same way, so you’re out of a job, period?

    Rock and a hard place. Assholes.

  4. What I don’t really understand is why this piece is being done now, and why they’re considering this speculative viewpoint worth focusing on.

    Hasn’t this been around forever by now? You don’t need to speculate on what you think these policies will do to women in the workplace — you can look around and know that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act did not result in employers refusing to hire women. Even outside anecdote and observation, you can do research on workplace demographics and know this. You can probably also do legal research on cases which involve violations of this law and see what kinds of precedents have been set and how that has affected employers.

    This is sort of like ABC doing a piece on how Social Security is going to inspire elder abuse.

  5. Silly feminists! Pregnant Randian uberfrauen need no protection from the nanny state! They will form a free state full of unfettered capitalism and selfishment in the layer of the atmosphere between the stratosphere and ionosphere!

  6. So what you’re saying is a female candidate shouldn’t have to stand on her merits alone? 😉

    Conservative rhetoric aside, there is some substance to the idea that excessive worker protections make it tougher to get hired.

    Recent graduates in France and Greece have been almost unable to get jobs for a while because older workers are so well protected, and because its very risky to hire the less-experienced, due to legal difficulties in firing them if they can’t do their jobs.

    Not that women don’t deserve protection for pregnancy, of course; child care is an extremely potent economic stimulus. Then again, if the child consumes more resources than its parent(s) produce, that might be another story—maybe this law should include tax incentives for workplaces to fund birth-control as well.

  7. 20/20 did that piece a few years ago about how matthew shephard was killed in a robbery not because people hated him for being gay (recently brought up again in congress!), so this doesn’t surprise me all that much.

  8. Opo: It’s never a wrong time for John Stossel to tell you why child labor laws, anti-discrimination statutes, and all amendments except the 2nd and 9th are stupid ideas and will be banished in Libertarian Candyland.

  9. Hasn’t this been around forever by now?

    Yes. I remember, in the mid-80s, being told by an earnest (female) candidate for the state legislature that laws prohibiting discrimination against women in the workplace would backfire because companies would just avoid hiring women, out of fear of being sued.

    It’s really depressing that this is still being taken seriously. No one would try to say anything like, “Businesses might be afraid of being sued if they hire a black person and then have to fire him or her, so we should get rid of racial protection laws.”

  10. And I’d almost forgotten they were responsible for that ‘quality’ journalism, Sam. Ugh.

  11. @Kyra – and the funny thing is, they’re the first ones to tell those same women they HAVE to have that baby. But good luck with that prenatal care, ’cause we’re not helping you with insurance 🙂

  12. I recently finished reading Susan Faludi’s Backlash and yeah, this is dishearteningly similar to anti-ERA arguments, like you said in the post. Grr.

    I wouldn’t say that holding Carrie Lukas up as a representative of what women want is the same as asking a homeless person about homelessness. Actually, it would be interesting if more news stories about homelessness gave a voice to actual homeless people. I’d say a more apt comparison would be asking Christopher McCandless (the dude from Into the Wild ) about homelessness, since he’s someone who opted out of having a home, same as Carrie Lukas is opting out of relying on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

  13. Recent graduates in France and Greece have been almost unable to get jobs for a while because older workers are so well protected

    I’d speculate that the real reason for this is that people are living longer and are healthier (and thus willing and able to work for longer). Not so much that working conditions are so awesome nobody is willing to retire.

    I’d also say that to be honest, I’d kind of rather a world where it’s a little harder to get a job right out of college because discrimination on the basis of age has been banned. Is it better to have a job knowing you only got it because the person who held it before you was let go for superficial ageist reasons?

  14. “and therefore be hesitant to hire women.”

    Umm, well good thing there are laws against refusing to hire women. Problem solved.

  15. Unfortunately, this is where ‘not watching a lot of TV’ will get you.

    If you did watch 20/20 regularly, the very moment that the name ‘Stossel’ was uttered, you would know this was going to be more Libertarian dickweedery from that self-anointed titan of egomania and naked greed.

  16. I wish adoption had been included in this act. Not every parent is a biological parent.

  17. John Stossel’s Libertarian Mustache made me snort. I demand his mustache start a blog – or at least comment on a daily basis.

  19. Here are some fun facts about the “Independent Women’s Forum” — also known as Phyllis Schlafly 2.0. (Disclaimer — I didn’t actually read all of these in detail, so some of these may be less offensive than they initially appear. Although, frankly, that isn’t likely.)

    Their policy briefing on sexual harassment is called “IWF Policy Brief #6: When Policies Cry Wolf: A Look at Sexual Harassment Policies on Campus.”

    They discuss the field of women’s studies in a piece entitled as “academic frauds.”

    They write about “the ‘diversity’ threat to California charity” that was posed by a bill that would require transparency about the makeup of boards and staff of foundations with $250 million in assets or more.

    They write about Title IX “striking again” and explain that Title IX is the “primary reason” behind men’s sports teams being cut at the collegiate level.

    They are big proponents of “the war on boys” meme, as well as “the hookup culture” meme.

    They have published a piece called “What Glass Ceiling? Debunking the Sexism Argument” and claim that the fact that women are paid on average 77% of what men are paid is a “myth” that needs “debunking.”

    They argue that children should be raised in heterosexual married relationships. In one article, they begin this conversation with a frame about “the other America” evidenced by the Katrina coverage of people stuck in the Super Dome — yielding the not so subtle inference that no, all those African-Americans aren’t in this horrifying situation because they are poor and the government failed them – no, no, they’re in it because they don’t get married before having babies! Welfare queen baby mamas!!! AAAGGGHHH!!

    Oh yeah. They also publish about how FMLA is BAD. http://www.iwf.org/news/show/20473.html
    Ironic that one of their employees would take that very same stance.

  20. It’s amazing that conservatives believe that corporations would follow the law if the law didn’t exist, even though corporations don’t follow laws that already exist, like protections against gender discrimination and pay inequity.

  21. Ha ha ha, I was just arguing this with a teenager over on LJ! S/he said that we shouldn’t provide parental leave because then employers won’t hire women OMG! After some back-and-forth, I had to say “I understand what you’re saying, but actual research on the pay gap in countries that have parental leave shows that greater workplace rights are good for women, not bad.” Now, I think the teenager in question was sincerely concerned about the issue and just hadn’t thought about it very hard, but I suspect that the conservatives are deliberately being concern trolls to promote their agenda, and that’s just revolting.

  23. I hate to say this, but it is true that companies don’t hire young women if there are strong laws to protect them. I’m Spanish; here, we have four to six months of paid maternity leave (Social Security pays). All of it except a couple of weeks can be transferred to the father. It is illegal to fire women when they’re pregnant.

    It’s also illegal, but still, very frequent, that if you’re a young woman and you go to a job interview, the interviewer asks you your marital status. Everyone says they’re single. Nodoby wants to hire women that may get pregnant and this is a very serious issue over here.

    Of course this doesn’t mean that there should be less protection, but it’s not an easy situation.

  24. Ok Nia, fine, but surely the solution is not to weaken laws that protect employees but to work more actively to change attitudes so that condemning people to lives of misery for daring to be too old/young/ill/much of a parent is unacceptable.

    And I also have to point out that employees in Spain have SFA as far as rights go. Which is a big reason that I’m currently living in the UK, even though I’m dying to go home. I’ve kind of got used to be treated as a human being.

  25. Nia,

    Wow, that’s really horrid. I had no idea. In the United States it’s illegal for an interviewer or potential employer to even *ask* you about your marital status — is that not true in Spain? They can’t even ask you “what’s your maiden name,” because that would indicate marital status if answered.

    Other questions you cannot legally be asked in an interview in the US include questions about your age, political affiliation, country of origin, disabilities you might have, or arrest record (they CAN ask if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony; but they can’t ask if you’ve been arrested, or convicted of misdemeanors.)

    Now, of course a lot of companies and interviewers DO ask these sorts of questions, either accidentally or deliberately. But it’s at least officially not allowed.

  26. “No one would try to say anything like, “Businesses might be afraid of being sued if they hire a black person and then have to fire him or her, so we should get rid of racial protection laws.”

    If only this were true. And why must these things so often be compared to the supposed experience of black people?

  27. No one would try to say anything like, “Businesses might be afraid of being sued if they hire a black person and then have to fire him or her, so we should get rid of racial protection laws.

    FFS.

  28. Crys, what does SFA mean??

    Adrienne, yes, it’s illegal to ask us our marital status. They ask anyway. They can’t guess from our names because Spaniards never change it on marriage.

  29. Oh, Crys, I get that’s something bad. It’s also the reason why so many people want to work for the government. We’re not lazy. We just need to have a work week with less than 50 hours.

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