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Florida State University Libraries )ORULGD6WDWH8QLYHUVLW\/LEUDULHV 2021 Pregnancy Discrimination in Higher Education: A Structural Approach Emily Giovanna Pacenti Follow this and additional works at DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES PREGNANCY DISCRIMINATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION : A STRUCTURAL APPROACH By EMILY PACENTI A Thesis submitted to the Department of Women’s Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring 2022 1 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Emily Pacenti defended on April 12, 2021. Signatures are on file with the Honors Program office. Dr. Leslie Richardson Thesis Director Dr. Na’ama Nagar Outside Committee Member Dr. Patricia Homan Committee Member 2 ABSTRACT It is my argument that pregnant students at public and private universities are systematically disenfranchised by university systems, not primarily through individual interactions that involve prejudice and discrimination, but through the common structure of universities themselves. The primary research question this thesis will attempt to answer is how do structural aspects of universities disadvantage pregnant students? Perspectives of feminist theory and conflict theory will be utilized to look at what makes a group minoritized and what makes discrimination structural as opposed to interpersonal. Using these theories as guides, I will argue that pregnant students function as a minoritized or disenfranchised group at universities because there are structural elements, such as university wide policy and societal views of natalism/pregnancy, that put them at a disadvantage. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and fact collecting about the average American university’s resources and policies regarding pregnant students, it is clear that, on average, institutions of higher education are structured in a way that inhibits the success of pregnant students. INTRODUCTION The university in and of itself is a social system — a unique society and community with its own culture, norms, expectations, values, and institutions. In the university society, there are different hierarchies of oppression and privilege, just as there are in broader society, along with different opportunities and restraints within institutions. Various groups of people within the university system include undergraduate, graduate, and international students, staff, faculty, community organizations that operate with or through the 3 university, and all the identities that make up who these people are — racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual identities, in addition to factors like ability status, citizenship, and age. It is my argument that pregnant students at public and private universities are systematically disenfranchised by university systems, not primarily through individual interactions that involve prejudice and discrimination, but through the common structure of universities themselves. We know that women and girls who become pregnant are less likely to finish their degrees and are more likely to drop out of school. For high school students, only 50% of teen mothers will go on to receive their degree in comparison with 90% of female students who do not give birth (“About Teen Pregnancy”, 2018). Fewer than 2% of teen mothers will finish college by age 30 (“Teen Pregnancy Affects Graduation'', 2013). This educational disruption can strengthen the motherhood penalty on educational and career momentum, contribute to the gendered wage gap, and have other lasting consequences for young mothers. Pregnancy discrimination can exist at an institutional level as well as the individual and the structural barriers to pregnant people within universities create discrimination and obstacles regardless of whether or not an individual has directly discriminated against the pregnant person. For example, the way universities accommodate pregnancy in regards to missing work and class time can put a pregnant student at an immediate disadvantage whereas different medical conditions such as physical illnesses and injury may be accommodated much more readily by instructors and departments. This paper will frequently refer to this experience as structural discrimination, operating under the definition in which structural discrimination is what refers to macro-level conditions that 4 constrain the opportunities, resources, and well-being of socially disadvantaged groups (Link & Phelan, 2001). The primary research question this thesis will attempt to answer is how do structural aspects of universities disadvantage pregnant students? Further questions include, how does pregnancy discrimination occur at a structural level in institutions of higher education? How does pregnancy discrimination affect female college students? What aspects of universities are structured in a way that fundamentally disadvantages pregnant students? How are women as affected by structural pregnancy discrimination at universities in both the long and short term and how does it affect issues of gendered inequality such as the wage gap? There will be some critical assumptions made throughout this analysis. While transgender men, nonbinary individuals, intersex people, and wide populations of folks with varying pronouns and identities can all become pregnant, this paper operates under the assumption that pregnancy discrimination primarily impacts women. Therefore, some passages may use the term “pregnant woman/women'' and some may use the phrase “pregnant person.” When discussing reproductive rights and pregnancy, it’s vital to thoroughly acknowledge the fact that women are not the only people who can become pregnant. However, the paper will largely focus on the effects of pregnancy discrimination on women. This research involves three key components. First, perspectives of feminist theory and conflict theory will be utilized to look at what makes a group minoritized and what makes discrimination structural as opposed to interpersonal. Using these theories as guides, I will argue that pregnant students function as a minoritized or disenfranchised group at universities because there are structural elements, such as universitywide policy and 5 societal views of natalism/pregnancy, that put them at a disadvantage. Through the lens of conflict and feminist theory, we can view the pregnant student as someone who is inherently disadvantaged in the common university structure. The feminist perspective allows us to explore the disproportionate effects of pregnancy discrimination on women such as educational disruption, career disruption, a more costly motherhood penalty, etc. Theoretically, we can propose that the difficulty pregnant students face in not just continuing to participate in their education, but to thrive in their studies as well, is due to structural oppression and barriers that prevent them from thriving in their studies while carrying a child, not individual discrimination. Additionally, the lens of disability theory will be utilized to examine the question of whether or not pregnancy is a disability and how that affects the varying ways in which universities can approach pregnancy discrimination on a sructural level. Next, in order to best visualize the real world implications of this subject and provide an original example of pregnancy discrimination at the structural level, I interviewed a student that left Florida State University after becoming pregnant due to structural obstacles that made it impossible for her to succeed. This interview will show what it looks like in a step by step process for a pregnant student to be oppressed by university systems such as healthcare, housing, child care, disability accommodation policy, and more. This interview was conducted as a journalistic endeavor and does not qualify as human research under DHHS or FDA regulations. The third and final component of the research is an analysis of university policies and resources across the United States in which I will identify characteristics that make a university structurally discriminatory towards pregnant students and furthermore identify how many schools had these characteristics and how many did not. The sample is made up 6 of 102 universities with two from each of the 50 states and Washington D.C., one public university and one private for each. The primary goal of this thesis is to achieve two things — offer a set of solutions for addressing pregnancy discrimination in American universities and a new lens of viewing the university itself as its own social system. For the set of solutions, this paper will establish and argue for distinct changes in policies and resources that will help solve the research problem of pregnant students failing to thrive in university environments due to factors outside of their control. Some examples include: universities should provide the same physical accommodations to pregnant students that they would any other temporarily injured, disabled, or ill student that provides medical documentation of a doctor’s recommendation for reduced physical activity or certain physical restraints. Universities should have a universal and comprehensive policy regarding academic accommodations for students who miss class due to pregnancy rather than leaving this up to the discretion of individual professors and instructors. University health centers should offer obstetric medical services, accept in-state Medicaid, and allow uninsured students
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