A hairdresser from North Lanarkshire has been awarded £7,500 after winning a pregnancy discrimination case after being sacked.

Siobhan Black, a hairdresser in Kilsyth in North Lanarkshire, was sacked after informing her employer during maternity leave that she was again pregnant.

When Ms Black was fired, her employer claimed it was for a “genuine redundancy situation”, though Ms Black argued that she was “simply chosen for dismissal” because of her second pregnancy.

Her sacking, she said, caused her great distress as well as an epileptic fit, prompted in part by anxiety about how she would support her children as an unemployed single mother.

Employment Judge James Hendry, commenting on Ms Black’s case, said “we find the claim well-founded”.

Earlier this year, another mother won a pregnancy discrimination case after she was sacked by an engineering firm in Glasgow because of time off due to extreme morning sickness, as reported by SPUC.

In another case, Google settled with a former employee who alleged she was punished by the tech giant for being pregnant and standing up for the rights of mothers.

SPUC comment

A SPUC spokesperson said: “An anti-mother, anti-child ethic is becoming more and more common, at all levels of employment, implying and even stating directly that there is no place for mothers in the workplace.

“Such a deeply sexist ethos goes hand in hand with the narrative that abortion is the only answer to the ‘problem’ of pregnancy.

“This is a hugely damaging and dangerous belief that, far from empowering women, forces many mothers to make the terrible decision to abort their children.”

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