Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between federal litigation patterns of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and state laws defining the scope of pregnancy discrimination. In response to a 1976 Supreme Court decision ruling that pregnancy discrimination was not sex discrimination, Congress passed an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA). The PDA provides that any discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or any pregnancy related medical conditions was a form of sex discrimination, and thereby was protected under Title VII. No longer could the Court or employers argue that pregnancy discrimination differentiated between the pregnant and the nonpregnant, avoiding violating the equal protection clause prohibition against gender discrimination. As a consequence, employers who have disability programs for their employees cannot exclude pregnancy and related conditions from the covered disabilities. In recent years, over 4,000 cases of pregnancy discrimination annually have been brought to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and/or the state Fair Employment Practices Agencies (EEOC 2003).

Litigation patterns have been very uneven across the circuits and not in the manner expected (based on patterns of litigation overall. There are 384 published district court cases between 1978 and 2003 and only 71 appellate court cases; this project is based on a data set collected by the author and a colleague, of published opinions of the federal courts surrounding the application and definition of this statute (1978-2002). It is a fairly typical distribution between appellate and district court cases, it has yet to be determined if this is a typical distribution for employment discrimination cases. In looking at the following frequencies, it is clear that some circuits have much higher levels of litigation, this is typical of certain circuits. However, when we examine the distribution of states within these circuits and then examine the distribution of litigation among the states, it becomes clear that it is not simply that one circuit is generating more pregnancy litigation than others. Instead, a few states generate a disproportionate number of cases. All of these states—Illinois, New York, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida—are not necessarily known for excessive litigation (e.g., Kansas and Pennsylvania). This may indicate that what is significant are factors within the state regarding pregnancy discrimination, not the federal factors held constant.

This paper examines state statutory law in the area of pregnancy discrimination and “pregnancy related medical conditions” protected by the PDA and see if the patterns are parallel. More specifically, this paper will compare state regulations regarding pregnancy discrimination and litigation levels in the federal circuits (at the district and appellate level).




Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Pregnancy Discrimination Charges EEOC & FEPAs Combined: FY 1992 - FY 2002. 2003. http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/pregnanc.html (visited
December 1, 2003).

General Electric Company v. Gilbert 97 S.Ct. 401 (1976)

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this presentation I examine a variety of issues concerning why and how women use popular pregnancy advice books. I explore pregnant readers’ evaluations of the pregnancy advice books they have read including their assessment of the trustworthiness of this advice compared to other sources such as female friends and physicians. Given that most women rank the information they receive from their physicians above that which they receive from female friends and (to a lesser extent) books, I also detail the uses of books in the context of women’s relationships with prenatal providers. Despite women’s reticence to criticize their providers, I show that books were used to compensate for deficiencies in doctor-patient communication and to facilitate the exchange of medical information. I pay particular attention to how women’s use of these books supports dominant medical definitions of pregnancy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Through textual analysis of a new fitness magazine for pregnant women and new mothers, we analyze how fitness discourse and practices constitute a contemporary consumptive, corporeal cult of “true” womanhood. We analyze all available issues of Shape Fit Pregnancy from its inception in 1997 through 2002. First, we highlight how fitness discourse defines a necessary third shift of fitness for pregnant women and new mothers termed “getting your body back.” Meeting the rigors of motherhood now requires a disciplining, normalizing, and consumptive third shift of fitness. Second, findings uncover how the second shift of household labor and child care within the private realm is reinforced as women’s work and is structured as necessarily intertwined with a new “third shift” of bodily management. Third, we analyze the specific way in which fitness discourse simultaneously merges the second shift of household labor and child care with the third shift of consumption and fitness, reifying a postmodern merger of time and space. The paper closes on a discussion of how, within such a merger, consumption, family values, traditional gender politics, and bodily surveillance are seamlessly woven together to constitute the politics of a fit, “liberatory” contemporary cult of true womanhood that masks global and domestic racialized, classed, sexualized, gendered inequities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Feminists argue that the dominant discourse of pregnancy shifted over the past thirty years: pregnant women are increasingly expected to subsume their needs to the fetus, making it more difficult for them to legitimize their suffering and act on their own behalf. This paper discusses the socially constructed process of normalization with respect to the pain and discomfort experienced by women during pregnancy. Using interview data from a longitudinal study on normality in pregnancy, I find most women interviewed normalized their symptoms—among them, nausea, back pain, breast tenderness, swelled ankles, and weight gain—in ways that fit this dominant discourse of pregnancy. However, a smaller group of women interviewed do not utilize this discourse to interpret their symptoms. Among these women, suffering was understood to exceed their understandings of the “normal pregnancy,” resulting in their seeking out changes in practice to relieve them of their burden, most notably, seeking induction of labor as much as several weeks before their due date. Importantly, their strategy to circumvent normalization was often carried out through increased medicalization of their pregnancies, either through their efforts to use medical technology for their own purposes or through the unintended consequences of their efforts. In addition to highlighting the importance of the embodied nature of meaning-making processes, this study shows that, even in the absence of a societal discourse that can supply women with alternative meanings to expectant motherhood, women make sense of their experience of suffering without falling back on the dominant discourse.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study uses original and secondary data sources to map transition norms about teenage pregnancy in nationally representative samples of adults and adolescents. Respondents’ levels of embarrassment about the prospect of a teenage pregnancy indicate the perceived presence of informal social sanctions arising from violating teenage pregnancy norms. This approach reflects the classic sociological definition of norms and avoids many of the pitfalls associated with measuring transition norms at the individual level through surveys.
For adolescent respondents, I report differences in teenage pregnancy norms based on the gender, race, ethnicity, and neighborhood socioeconomic resources of the prospective teenage parent. For adult respondents, I report norm differences based on the gender of the prospective teenage parent, as well as whether they plan to marry. I compare respondents’ pregnancy norms on the basis of the age (adolescent vs. young adult) of the prospective parent. Finally, I map differences in adult respondents’ teenage pregnancy norms based on the respondents’ demographic characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, education, income, and age.
These results are relatively unique in reporting transition norms in a contemporary national sample of Americans. They can assess the accuracy of public discourse about positive teenage pregnancy norms among the poor and some minority groups. This study’s findings are a first step towards understanding how norms about teenage pregnancy vary across subgroups and which teenage parents suffer the most sanctions.