Pregnancy and employment: The perceptions and beliefs of fellow workers

Pregnancy and Working: A Critical Reading of Advice and Information on Pregnancy and Employment

As more women remain in paid employment during pregnancy, women's public role as worker is enacted in parallel with the transition to the private role of mother. Cultural resources, such as books, magazines and other literature, may support this transition and help to identify the expectations of new and changing roles. Information and advice about working contained in such publications may also be implicated in the continuation of public and private beliefs about pregnancy and employment. Investigation of the representations of work in literature available to pregnant women suggests several topics with-in which material on working can occur; these are health, rights, and work and home. This coverage is discussed in relation to the different discourses of pregnancy, particularly a discourse of responsibility, and how these may position women as workers or mothers.

A Grounded Theory Study of How Nurses Integrate Pregnancy and Full-Time Employment: Becoming Someone Different

BACKGROUND

A holistic exploration of the experience of how nurses integrate pregnancy and employment is lacking among the global nursing literature.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this research was to explore how primiparous U.S. nurses integrated pregnancy and full-time employment.

METHODS

Using a grounded theory approach, 20 nurses from the United States, who were pregnant and delivered their first baby-while employed full time on 12-hour work shifts-provided a firsthand account of how they incorporated pregnancy with professional nursing employment.

RESULTS

The basic social process, "becoming someone different," emerged to explain how U.S. nurses integrated pregnancy and full-time employment in early and late stages. Four core categories were: (a) "looking different, feeling different,"(b) "expectations while expecting," (c) "connecting differently," and (d) "transitioning labor."

DISCUSSION

Within early and late stages, pregnant nurses becoming someone different navigate through various social interactions with peers and patients alike, with meaning assigned to those experiences. Research with pregnant nurses from other countries, nurses working in settings other than acute care, and multiparous nurses is needed to further expand on these findings.

Long-term sickness absence during pregnancy and the gender balance of workplaces

AIMS

This study addresses how the gender composition of workplaces affects pregnant women's sickness absence. It also assesses whether an observed association may be explaine by differential selection to female- or male-dominated workplaces.

METHODS

The analyses are based on Norwegian registry data from 2003-2011. Using Poisson regressions with detailed control for occupational categories, I examine whether the number of absence days are associated with the proportion of females at the workplace. I address possible selection effects by Poisson regressions with fixed individual effects using only within-individual variation on women with two or more pregnancies during the time window.

RESULTS

The analyses indicate a positive and significant relationship between the female proportion in workplaces and sickness absence rates during pregnancy. Analyses limited to within-individual variation also show positive and significant effects of similar strength, indicating that the observed relationship is not due to differential selection of absence-prone pregnant workers to female-dominated workplaces.

CONCLUSIONS

The proportion of female individuals at workplaces is positively associated with sickness absence rates during pregnancy this association is not likely explained by occupational nor individual characteristics the results are consistent with absence culture theory and more lenient norms concerning sickness absence during pregnancy at female-dominated workplaces.