During a job interview, should an applicant disclose her pregnancy to a potential employer?
Doing so may assure she is not hired and leave her unable to prove that not getting the job had anything to do with her pregnancy.
Not disclosing it may leave a new employer feeling cheated. This could impact the relationship.
An employer may feel that hiring someone who barely has a chance to settle in before leaving on maternity leave is a problem. It hired, and maybe trained, her but now she is unavailable to do the work she was hired to do.
A combined maternity/parental leave can be up to 78 weeks, or about 18 months, long. If she becomes pregnant again before the first maternity leave is over, this could result in a total leave of about three years. Though when she returns, the employer may have gained a loyal employee who is not likely to quit.
Human Rights Code
Human rights legislation prohibits employers from discriminating based on sex/gender. That includes pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions. Generally, it also prohibits pregnancy-related questions during a job interview.
An employer is required to accommodate protected characteristics, including gender and pregnancy, until it reaches the point of undue hardship. Undue hardship might include excessive costs or health or safety risks. The onus is on the employer to establish it. This may be difficult, though not impossible, to establish.
Other than at an applicant’s request, an employer should wait until after an offer of employment is made to discuss any accommodations required.
An employer who refuses to employ a woman due even in part to her pregnancy risks a human rights complaint.
However, what the law requires, and what actually occurs, do not always align.
For example, some employers do ask about pregnancies and child bearing plans in interviews.
If a pregnancy is disclosed early in the hiring process, the employer might quietly decide someone else is “a better fit”.
In Brooks v. Canada Safeway Ltd., [1989] 1 SCR 1219, the Supreme Court of Canada stated at p 1238 that “everyone in society benefits from procreation.” At p 1243, the Court stated:
That those who bear children and benefit society as a whole thereby should not be economically or socially disadvantaged seems to bespeak the obvious. It is only women who bear children; no man can become pregnant. … it is unfair to impose all of the costs of pregnancy upon one half of the population.
What to Say?
Generally, the law does not require potential employers to be informed of a pregnancy.
If the pregnancy is at a very early stage, a woman may decide to remain quiet.
Depending on the circumstances, it may be unwise to disclose a pregnancy in a job interview.
The better time to reveal it before commencing work, if at all, is after receiving an offer of employment. Even better yet, once all other details are agreed upon.
If she is not going to be offered the job, her pregnancy is irrelevant.
After receiving an offer, she may decide to inform the employer of her pregnancy and the due date. If she does, she should ask the employer to accommodate her pregnancy.
She may discuss how she plans to prepare her colleagues for her leave and her plans for returning to work.
She might emphasize her skills and experience and that she is excited to be on board.
An employer who makes an offer of employment and then revokes it after learning a candidate is pregnant is effectively saying that it will not accommodate the pregnancy.
If this happens, consider promptly submitting a complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal for gender discrimination in employment.
This publication is intended for general information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
