DELI Lunchtime Seminar: Victoria Hooton and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis

In this paper, we present a working chapter of our forthcoming monograph, which examines the purpose of pregnancy protections in employment law frameworks. In this seminar, we focus our attention on EU labour law. We interrogate whether such protections are (or should be) a matter of occupational safety or non-discrimination. The examination of pregnancy protections includes a close reading of secondary EU law and CJEU jurisprudence on pregnancy discrimination and occupational safety for pregnant workers. 

Pertinently, we focus on the building of the pregnancy discrimination framework on the basis of sex discrimination, as the CJEU (and more recently the ECtHR) have declared that only women can be the subject of pregnancy discrimination, thus it is inherently tied to the female sex. We highlight the challenges this approach creates for non-binary and trans individuals, who can use ART to reproduce but may face workplace discrimination due to falling outside of the gender discrimination rubric created by the regional Courts. 

While existing non-discrimination protections are problematic for this reason, utilising non-discrimination is important for recognising how pregnant people can be treated differently even where occupational safety is not at issue. Therefore, we posit that we should consider how non-discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy can be framed more inclusively.