Fertility Treatment and Work

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Conference
2005 National Women's Conference
Date
18 October 2004
Decision
Carried

Conference is concerned that some women are being discriminated against because they are undergoing fertility treatment.

One month before the embryo is inserted the woman has to take strong medication. This medication often affects the woman’s hormone balance and the results can make the women feel extremely ill. After the embryo has been inserted total rest is required with regular hospital visits.

Our concerns are that the sickness absence of these women is being recorded in the same way as other sickness absence and could result in these women being subjected to capability, competency and in some cases, owing to redundancy policies taking sick leave into consideration, being made redundant.

Conference asks the National Women’s Committee to raise this issue with the National Executive Council to bring this problem to the attention of branches and carry out a survey to establish how widespread this problem is and report back to Conference next year with these results.