Picking on Moms in the Workplace

July 6, 2006 — -- Dawn Gallina said her career at a prestigious law firm was going well -- until the managing partner found out she had a baby.

Then, she said, he started testing her. Would she work Christmas? Come in on weekends?

"I would go in and we wouldn't have anything to do," Gallina told ABC News. "I felt like it was just, 'Let's see if she'll come in.' And of course, I would."

For Jonathan Bell, who routinely worked six days a week designing cars, his trouble started when he took time off to visit his father in the hospital.

"I took a Saturday off to attend to my father. Sunday, I went to work for a while. And then Monday, the next day after, I was let go," Bell said.

Bell's employer said he was laid off for financial reasons, that it had nothing to do with his leaving early to visit his father. But law professor Joan Williams believes that cases like Bell's and Gallina's are part of a growing trend.

Advocates call it the same thing: discrimination -- family responsibility discrimination, some said.

"The fact is in many situations, workers with family responsibilities are not treated the same as workers without family responsibilities," Williams explained.

Same Work, Less Pay

A recent experiment at Cornell University seemed to suggest the same. It found that when subjects were asked to pick from among the resumes of potential job applicants, mothers were 44 percent less likely to get hired than nonmothers with the same resume. What's more, when they were hired, the mothers were paid $11,000 less.

"The great majority of employed women do have children, so this is impacting a huge number of women in the workplace," study author Shelley Correll told ABC News.

Taking Their Cases to Court, Often

Both men and women suffer this kind of employment discrimination. But it occurs so often among working mothers that researchers said the glass ceiling should really be called the maternal wall.

Now, more than ever before, these men and women are taking their cases to court.

Over the past decade, employment discrimination suits have declined overall, but there's been a 400 percent increase in family responsibility discrimination suits. This comes in the wake of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was passed in 1993 and designed to protect those employees taking time off to care for children, parents, or even themselves.

"Family values have a very broad constituency in this country," Williams said. "You are more likely to win, it appears, if you bring a family responsibility case than if you bring other kinds of discrimination cases."

The good news for caregivers is that while employers may not all be family friendly, the courts increasingly are. Recent studies suggest that in both judge and jury trials, lawsuits that allege bias on the grounds of being a parent or caregiver are successful more often than the overall pool of discrimination suits.

For Jonathan Bell and Dawn Gallina, that's of great comfort. Bell's case is still pending, while Gallina's employer offered her a cash settlement after a jury sided with her in court.

"I don't think that by being a parent anyone wants special rights," Gallina said. "I think we want equal rights."