1. Nothing like admitting that you discriminated in your own hiring practices quote “I made life easier for myself by hiring mostly men or women that I though were beyond their childbearing years”. I’m 45 with no children and I suppose you would have overlooked me for a position due to your generic broad beliefs. How can anyone take anything you say with credibility when you admit yourself that you engaged in some form of discrimination in your own hiring practices?
2. It is easy to make a claim of “women conveniently developing post-partum depression shortly before RTW”, but as someone with a degree in biochemistry, one would think that you would engage in citing your clinical sources that must have been studied and or published on this subject for such a claim to be valid. If your claim has merit, then you know there would be data on the subject.
3. Discrimination, as you are aware, can be varied at different levels within an organization. What your wife may have experienced a certain division at a certain level within Novartis, may be completely different that other same sex individuals may have experienced in other divisions at different levels within the organization. I myself have been in the pharma business over 15 years, with several big pharma companies, including Novartis. You absolutely cannot make the blanket claims and statements that you have made with any real validity. One can easily tell your a rigid person who harbors certain anoymosities towards others, and by your own admittance acknowledged you engaged in hiring discrimination. That does not say much about your character, biochemistry degree or not.

I’ll save you the trouble of describing what you think that makes me. I’ve conveniently provided the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny

I don’t know what dictionary you’re using, but that counts as disparaging in mine. And as far as generalization goes, we have a proposition asserting something to be true either of all members of a certain class or of an indefinite part of that class. Since your argument is based on “women who conveniently develop postpartum “depression” shortly before RTW,” then that fits too.

And if, as you point out, post-partum depression is “one of the most common reasons that women take time off from work after childbirth” one might think there could be some validity to the claim. However, your use of scare quotes around depression makes me think you’re not a great believer in mental illness. Unless you’re implying a disbelief in post-partum depression in particular.

But it doesn’t really matter since none of this has anything to do with the post in which Novartis was found guilty of retaliating against an employee for taking a legal leave-of-absence.

In some if not all provinces in Canada women are entitled to a 12 month leave of absence with a guarantee of a return to their job, maybe not exactly the position they held when they left, but at least a job within the company at an equal rate to what they left.

Additionally, they can share the leave with their husbands, for example they can take 6 months leave and their husbands can take the other six month leave.

I find this fair and reasonable and we should all get in line, how wonderful it would be to have this same plan here in the US. Parents actually being able to stay with their children during the first most vulnerable year of their life.

These are our children we are talking about our precious heritage. DO we not owe them all the chance to raised and loved and nurtured by their parents first?

I could never accept the 8 weeks maternity leave. What dis respect we show ourselves with this policy.

Hope it changes….
No wonder people “fake” postpartum depression - who wouldn’t 8 weeks is too soon to return to work when you have a chance to make a profound difference on such a small human being..