Democratic Primaries
Related: About this forumElizabeth Warren Details Her Account of Losing Teaching Job Because of Pregnancy
It is one of Elizabeth Warrens signature anecdotes in her stump speech: By the end of her first year as a public-school teacher, she was visibly pregnant, and the principal wished her luck and hired another teacher to replace her.
In recent days, a conservative news site and other outlets have cited evidence that challenges her account, including past remarks by Ms. Warren in which she did not mention being forced to leave the school and minutes from a school board meeting showing that her contract was initially extended for the next school year.
Ms. Warren is now pushing back against any suggestion that she has misrepresented the circumstances of her departure, and pointing to the discrimination that many pregnant women have faced on the job.
The school board did extend her contract early in her pregnancy, before the school knew about it, she said in an interview with CBS News. But two months later, when it was clear that she was pregnant, she lost the job.
She added: This was 1971, years before Congress outlawed pregnancy discrimination but we know it still happens in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. We can fight back by telling our stories. I tell mine on the campaign trail, and I hope to hear yours.
Ms. Warren did not name the principal in her tweets. News accounts show that the principal at the time was Edward Pruzinsky. He died in 1999.
Ms. Warren has frequently cited her experience with pregnancy discrimination as she has laid out her political biography to voters, explaining why she went from a public-school teaching career into law and eventually politics, and how her professional development was affected by a form of workplace bias that many women encounter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-fired-pregnant.html
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
AZ8theist
(5,506 posts)You keep shoveling their shit right back into their face, Lizzy!!
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
vsrazdem
(2,177 posts)Had just receive an excellent review the month earlier from my boss and a raise. Two weeks later, they found out I was pregnant. I was called to HR to say they were letting me go, that work was not up to par. I confronted them and told them I was going to sue them because it was obvious they were letting me go because I was pregnant. They said they would pay my unemployment, and since I didn't plan on going back to work full time after my pregnancy anyway, I agreed. They just didn't want a pregnant woman working in their lobby. It was a common occurrence back then.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)to this story. However, the bank probably wouldn't even have paid your unemployment if the law against pregnancy discrimination had not been passed by then. I give them no kudos. They probably received advice from their legal department that unemployment would cost them much less than a lawsuit, which they would likely lose in the circumstances you describe.
I am so sorry that you - or any woman - has ever had to go through this at a time which should be positive and non-stressful.
In those days, it was somehow "shameful" for women to be obviously pregnant in any kind of professional setting. While things have changed, they can all too easily go backwards again, viz. Trump's recent statement about pregnant women and the constant attacks on women's control over their own bodies.
It's out there for all to see. And those who refuse to see it, will make the world worse for us all.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
marybourg
(12,637 posts)forced out of a laboratory job in a dental gold manufacturing company in NYC, because I got engaged! I found out I was only the latest one in a long line of young women they had treated the same way. The ratIonale? Youre going to leave us anyway soon, either when you get married or get pregnant, so its better you go now while youre in between projects.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)hear this. But it's an all too familiar story for that era.
I am old enough to remember when many women teachers had to resign at least when they got married. The prime rationale was that they would get pregnant.
Another rationale was that, if their husbands' jobs required a transfer, the women would automatically leave with them. In neither instance was a woman's choice ever considered. She was considered to be either a baby manufacturer or a consort.
Corporations and education systems just couldn't put on their big boy pants and make allowances for either situation. Many have learned to do so today and - surprise - the world did not fall apart.
Many actually seemed to hope that it would.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
ms liberty
(8,601 posts)When she started to show, they were going to let her go, but one of the managers had known her grandfather so he moved her upstairs to another department where she was not in public view. She's told me that story a number of times over the last 25 years, lol. As women, we keep having these convos with each other and now we seem to be going backward instead of progressing.
Edited to add: this really seems to be hitting a chord with women. We all know this story, it's happened to us and other women in our lives.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
DrFunkenstein
(8,745 posts)Seven months before an alleged tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump told radio host Howard Stern that he would give his pregnant wife, Melania, a couple of days or maybe a week to regain her model figure after giving birth.
You know, Howard, shes got the kind of a body and makeup where, about one day after the baby, its going to be the same as it was before, Trump said during an appearance on Sterns show on Dec. 7, 2005.
Youre giving her one day? Stern asked.
One or two, Trump replied.
Moments later, the future president reconsidered. I think Ill give her a week, he said. No, Ill give her a week.
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Trump also said in the 2005 interview that he had seen beautiful women that for the rest of their lives have become [a] horror after giving birth.
You know, they gain like 250 pounds, he told Stern. Its like a disaster.
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Barron Trump was born March 20, 2006.
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told In Touch magazine that she had sex with Trump in July 2006 at a golf tournament in Nevada.
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New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser, who initially endorsed Trump for president, withdrew her support in August 2016 and shared the following anecdote in an article:
When I visited about two months after his lovely wife, Melania, now 46, gave birth to the couples son, Barron, now 10, the infamous germaphobe boasted that after fathering five children, hed never changed a diaper.
I enthused that Melania, who stood quietly nearby aboard 5-inch stilettos, had lost all her baby weight.
Trump corrected me: Shes almost lost all the baby weight.
I was embarrassed for the mother of his youngest kid, who ignored the dig.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/19/ill-give-her-a-week-to-lose-the-baby-weight-trump-said-of-melania-months-before-alleged-tryst-with-porn-star/
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided