Have I been discriminated against for being pregnant?

[fugde08]

I was offered a role as the Sales and Marketing officer for a hotel, they offered me a contract, I accepted and then I found out I was pregnant. I thought it through and realised working full time with a toddler being pregnant and potentially having to shield again was a bad idea. I rejected the full time role and they came back to me asking if I would help out on a freelance basis and improve the website, I agreed and thought it was a great idea and told them I could do a call whenever to discuss things. I never heard back from them again, only to discover on LinkedIn that the next month they hired another freelance Sales and Marketing Assistant (doing some awful promotion btw). I know I turned down the contract but I can't help but feel annoyed and discriminated against, I wasted about 8 hours going to the hotel to discuss strategies and getting quotes for media promotion, such a waste of my time I could have spent with my son.

So when you turned them down, they asked you whether you could help on a freelance basis, and then when they decided to hire another freelancer instead, you think it’s because you’re pregnant?

What’s making you think that? Did they find out about your pregnancy after asking you about freelancing?

How long since they asked about the freelance stuff?
. I'm not sure you can claim discrimination if they offered you a job, you declined it and then there was a vague discussion with nothing agreed

You declined the job. There’s nothing to discuss here. Did you tell them the reason for turning it down- not that it matters?

Unfortunately there's no case to be made for choosing one freelancer over another if you haven't got a contract with them.

You’re not discriminating against if you are not available for the job .
Importantly- congratulations!

When I declined the job I was honest and explained I was expecting and that was the main reason why (even though I was only very early days). I guess it's just more annoying than anything.

I think you need to see the full-time employed job and the freelance role as separate and unconnected jobs. Forget the employed job. It’s irrelevant. You turned it down. For the freelance role, you had an initial discussion that looked like it would lead to something. It didn’t. They started to use another freelancer instead - as is their right. Your being pregnant has no bearing on this.

I think you’re annoyed with yourself for turning down the job.

They initially offered you freelance after already knowing about your pregnancy, so you’re not going to get anywhere arguing that when they went elsewhere instead, it was because of that.

If they had a problem with engaging a pregnant freelancer they would simply have said nothing at all about freelance work.