Pregnant people in work documents

[L0stinCyberspace]

I could do with advice on how to raise that "pregnant women" should be used (I can hardly believe that I have to raise this with sane adults) in official documents in work. Unfortunately a draft now contains "pregnant people" and I really find that objectionable. The person drafting it is very nice, very inclusive but very woke. I'm afraid of being accused of being transphobic or exclusionary. How to proceed?

I suggest reading this and I hope somebody will be along soon with suggestions of how to word it.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full

I’d say that because pregnancy discrimination and illness only affect members of the female sex, and specifically don’t affect males, the language should reflect that, and the polite way to refer to adult members of the female sex is women.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4451799-Pregnant-people-now-being-used-by-my-local-trusts-maternity-dept

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4474890-woman-s-hour-7th-feb-pregnant-people?messages=100&pg=1

Information in those threads but no actual wording, IYSWIM.

Thank you @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus looks excellent, I will share that with the work group, if
challenged.

@tabbycatstripy I suspect I'll be told it's about including everyone...

'Everyone' doesn't suffer pregnancy discrimination and illness it only affects one particular group, if they expand it to 'everyone' then they are actively discriminating against the group of people it does affect.

I can only think of three approaches, none of which is without its risks.

The first is to ask if they used similar erasing language when discussing, fatherhood, and if they would, what would the people we tend to call father now be called? 'Impregnating' people?

It might be possible to frame that more pleasantly, of course.

The second one is to say that many women have an embodied gender identity which is anchored in their experiences of living with a female body, including the experience of pregnancy. When someone writes 'pregnant people,' they mean "pregnant men, pregnant women, and pregnant people who are neither men nor women or at least not all the time."

And that erases the gender identity of all women and men for whom it is embodied. So they are invalidated!! (sorry, I find that funny)

The third one is to refer to the UK MOMA bill where attempts were made to use 'pregnant person' for 'pregnant woman' and that was changed to 'mother.'

[quote EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]I suggest reading this and I hope somebody will be along soon with suggestions of how to word it.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full[/quote]
I second that article. It is very clear.

Pregnancy is inescapably 'exclusionary'.

Only women can be pregnant. Sexual reproduction is "sexist", oddly enough!

As this relates to the protected characteristic of sex under EA2010 it is perfectly legal and appropriate to use biological terms to reference who this policy relates to. The issue is to be clear & for that you need to use scientifically accurate language. You could offer to include sentence that says 'this document uses female to denote biological sex, as such it is inclusive of everyone in this category, including all gender identities and those with none."

This is happening at my work, HR policies, and I raised it and was accused of ‘exclusionary language’. Which I challenged. The revised policy with the ‘inclusive’ language seems to be delayed though, so am optimistic - perhaps too optimistic.

It upset me actually, the erasure of ‘women’ in policies about things we experience due to biology.

You need a bloke - one with a penis and everything - to ask for maternity leave. I suspect they'd remember who it is has babies then.

I’d ask them to change it to pregnant women - until a time comes when they may need to change it (yeah right)