Pregnancy complaints reach reported decade high as workers fight to keep jobs

Abby McCawley returned to work after two days off with morning sickness and could not log into her computer. Moments later, her boss called her into his office and dismissed her. She was five months into a rental-property-manager job at Ray White Brunswick, in Melbourne’s inner north. ⁴⁰

McCawley says she had disclosed her pregnancy and requested temporary flexibility to work from home. She alleges her dismissal was pregnancy-related. Ray White Brunswick disputes that explanation, saying it terminated her employment over reported and observed behaviour. Her case is before the Federal Court; the reason for her dismissal remains unresolved. ¹

That contested sequence puts a concrete consequence behind a reported rise in pregnancy-discrimination complaints: the loss of a wage while preparing for a child. A Four Corners investigation has documented women’s accounts of losing jobs or leaving established careers when pregnancy and parental responsibilities collided with employers’ demands. ABC News Daily’s account of the investigation says Australian Human Rights Commission complaints reached their highest level in more than a decade. ¹

The policy question is narrower than whether Australia should prohibit pregnancy discrimination. It already has discrimination protections. The immediate argument is over whether workplace entitlements give pregnant workers and returning parents enough practical room to remain employed—and whether a government review will change them.

McCawley’s account concerns a relatively new employee seeking a temporary adjustment. Alicia Warner’s concerns a senior public servant trying to resume an established career after parental leave. Warner says she proposed full-time compressed hours: the same total working time, arranged differently, rather than a reduction in hours. ¹

Warner says the Department of Home Affairs rejected that arrangement and she accepted voluntary redundancy. Mediation ended without agreement. She connects her departure to the refusal of her proposed return-to-work schedule. ¹

Home Affairs gives a different explanation. The department says Warner’s role changed after the Bondi terrorist attack and required sustained executive leadership. That response matters: the employer points to the demands of a changed position, while Warner describes an unsuccessful effort to combine that position with parental responsibilities. The available account does not establish whether the refusal met the department’s legal obligations or whether an alternative arrangement was feasible. ¹

Neither dispute can responsibly be reduced to a finding of unlawful discrimination. McCawley’s allegation is contested in court; Warner’s unsuccessful mediation is not a legal determination. But both raise the same practical question: when a worker asks to organise work around pregnancy or parenthood, what must an employer accommodate before the job is lost?

The reported decade high is a warning about demand for redress, not a national rate of proven discrimination. The exact commission complaint total and reporting year have not been established in the available evidence. ABC’s account describes the period as “last year”, without resolving whether that means a calendar or financial year. Nor is there an established figure for the proportion of those complaints upheld. ¹

JobWatch’s executive director, Zana Bytheway, separately reported more than 600 calls from working mothers concerning pregnancy and related discrimination in the period described as the last financial year. That financial year is also unconfirmed. JobWatch is an employment-rights community legal centre supporting workers in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania—not a national census of workplace experiences. ^{1 49 50}

Calls are not necessarily unique women or separate cases. A person may seek help more than once or approach both JobWatch and the commission. Adding the two measures together would manufacture a total the evidence cannot support.

A separately dated JobWatch finding provides clearer evidence of growing pressure on its service. On 12 December 2025, it reported that pregnancy and breastfeeding discrimination enquiries had doubled over three years. That category includes breastfeeding; it does not establish the financial year behind the separate 600-plus call figure or provide a national discrimination rate. ⁵¹

The broader prevalence evidence is much older. The 2014 Supporting Working Parents national review found that 49 percent of mothers—approximately one in two—reported workplace discrimination connected with pregnancy, parental leave or returning to work. It describes reported experiences across those stages, not just pregnancy, and is neither a current estimate nor a count of employers found to have broken the law. ^{15 20}

ABC’s account of that historical study says 91 percent of mothers who reported discrimination did not lodge a formal complaint. The denominator is affected mothers, not all mothers. The precise survey definition of a formal complaint has not been established here, but the finding illustrates why complaint totals and reported experience are different measures. It cannot be used to multiply today’s complaints into a current victim estimate. ¹

Confidential settlements further restrict what becomes public. Fifteen women interviewed in the investigation said they had signed settlement confidentiality clauses. That is a finding about those interviewees, not a representative national rate—and neither a settlement nor a confidentiality clause establishes an employer’s admission of liability. ¹

The clearest rule in dispute is the service threshold for statutory unpaid parental leave. Employees need 12 months of continuous service with their employer to qualify. That includes eligible regular casuals, whom the Fair Work Ombudsman describes as employed on a regular and systematic basis. ²²

The distinction is important. This is an unpaid-leave eligibility rule, not the eligibility test for the separate government paid-parental-leave scheme. Nor does it remove an employer’s discrimination obligations toward newer employees. Australia’s federal framework includes the Sex Discrimination Act 1984; access to a particular leave entitlement and protection against discrimination are separate questions. ^{22 46}

There is also an existing right for eligible pregnant employees to request flexible working arrangements. Employers may refuse requests covered by that framework only on reasonable business grounds. A right to request is not an automatic right to the exact schedule or working location sought, and these general rules do not settle either woman’s dispute. ¹³

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody wants the one-year unpaid-leave threshold reconsidered. She has also identified workplace policies that can disadvantage pregnant workers or parents, including indirect discrimination, as an area needing reform. Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth says the government is considering the issues through its review of the National Employment Standards, Australia’s minimum employment entitlements. ¹

There is a documented parliamentary process behind that response. Rishworth referred an inquiry into the operation and adequacy of the standards on 27 November 2025. A parliamentary release dated 25 March 2026 announced a public hearing for the following day. The announcement established a scheduled hearing, not proof it occurred, a reform deadline or an enacted change. ⁴⁵

The distinction between a review and a changed entitlement is not bureaucratic fine print. A worker preparing for a child needs to know what leave she can take and whether she can keep her job—not simply that those questions are under consideration. The complaint figures cannot settle how widespread unlawful discrimination is today. The workers’ accounts make the cost of leaving the practical questions unresolved unmistakable.