What Protection Is Provided F Essay Research

What Protection Is Provided F Essay, Research Paper

Nowadays, 20th Centuries, many people would like to enhance or want to achieve the feminism in the society. However, it is hard to achieve it. It is because male and female are very different from their physical and mental thinking. They work as different behaviour in different workplace. The pervasive popular media promotes a stereotype of male and female roles, which is generally inaccurate and often damaging to women. So some employers only think that men are more useful then women in the workplace, especially pregnant women. That means they have discrimination in their mind. Because of this, there are some laws or acts to protect pregnant women to prevent that unlawful discrimination.

For this pregnancy discrimination, anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws will protect them. Now Australia was became a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CWDAW is a statement of standards agreed by the world community. By supporting CEDAW, the Government committed itself to developing policies and programs to improve the status of women in Australia. Since then Australia has put in place a structural framework of anti-discrimination measures, strategies and programs to assist women.

The single most important step to give effect to the provisions of CEDAW in Australia was passing of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. In fact, the Australian Government delayed supporting CEDAW until it was confident that Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) would be passed. The SDA makes it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex, martial status or pregnancy, in the area of employment.

There is also another Act to protect pregnancy women, that is the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986. Affirmative action legislation works in tandem with the Sex Discrimination Act. While the SDA prevent specified actions, affirmative action legislation provides for positive actions to be taken to ensure that disadvantaged people are able to compete on equal terms for jobs, promotion, training and

other employment opportunities. It seeks to address the effect of past discrimination, specifically in the workplace, and the policies and attitudes that underlie it.

So how these Acts can protect working pregnant women. How can they eliminate discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or maternity, and to require countries to introduce paid maternity leave without loss of career or social benefits and to encourage measures to help workers combine work and family responsibility. Is it the employer can dismiss them because of grounds of pregnancy.

If women just had the pregnancy confirmed, even she is a permanent or temporary employee, full-time or part-time; they are entitled to maternity leave. Casual employees are not eligible for maternity leave. Maternity leave has been available to most Australian women for many years, although entitlements vary greatly. They can start maternity leave up to nine weeks before the expected birth date, and take up to 12 months full-time leave after the birth. With the employer’s agreement, they can choose to take the 12 months on a part-time basis, or a mixture of full and part-time, as long as they return to their job before their child’s second birthday. Besides, they still paid for when they having maternity leave. If they will have completed at least 40 weeks of continuous service before the expected date of birth, then they will be eligible to be paid at their ordinary rate for nine (9) weeks. But any further maternity leave is without pay, or against other forms of paid leave. And they can also arrange the payment. They can choose pay in advance as a lump sum or fortnightly as normal or fortnightly as half-pay over a period of 18 weeks, or a combination of full-pay and half-pay. Also their choice can affect their tax deductions too.

There are no set times for them to choose how long before the birth that they should leave and how soon they should return to work. They can choose to stop work before the birth and decide to return to work, these are decided by themselves. They can consult with their family and health advisers. Basically, there is no minimum period of maternity leave.

If the job will risk the health to the pregnant women or to the unborn child, they can approach to their manager to arrange safer alternative duties. It may be as simple as providing a suitable chair and short rest breaks, or may include a change in duties or changes in when and where work is done.

If they are being transferred to other duties, they have right to check that the salary is still the same as their current pay, the duties and responsibilities are at a similar level or not. If they are not satisfied, they can obtain advice from EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) unit or spokeswoman and then approach to their manager. Downgrading of their position on the basis of their pregnancy can constitute illegal discrimination.

While they are on maternity leave, their superannuation may still available, but there may have some deferral or reduction in some of the current schemes. To avoid this, they should ask for the details.

In addition, pregnant women can return back to their usual job after maternity leave. Refer to The NSW Industrial Relations Ac