International Women's Day

During International Women’s Day the Citizens Information Phone Service highlighted the continuing discrimination against women in the work place. Up to 30% of the 40,000 calls received by the Citizens Information Phone Service last year were concerned with employment issues and many of these were from women.

"The types of calls we received included cases where women were denied their rights under the Maternity Protection Act in particular. Staff are entitled to take paid time out for post and antenatal visits, and have holiday rights whilst on maternity leave. Some employers were making it difficult for women taking parental leave. Also there were a significant number of cases of dismissal, or threat of dismissal to women whilst they were pregnant." Judy told us. "Many employers are unaware that it is against the law to dismiss a woman for any issue connected with the fact that she is pregnant, no matter how short a time she has been employed by them." she added.

"We deal with an even greater number of cases of indirect discrimination against women employees and this is due to the fact that many women opt to work part time in order to give sufficient time to their family commitments and it is part time workers who experience the greatest difficulties in securing their rights in the work place" said Ms. Bamford.

The Phone Service, which is supported by Comhairle received over 5000 calls in 2003 from part time workers, many of whom were women, with issues relating to their being denied their legal entitlements, as set down in the Protection of Employees (part-time Work) Act 2001 to such things as paid holidays, protection against unfair dismissal and redundancy entitlements. Women also called the Service regarding issues such as lone-parent entitlements, family law issues, the rights of non-Nationals, medical card queries and the like.

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