Thread by @1gillianfrank1

What school board policy on pregnant teachers looked like at midcentury in PA.

Source: Republican and Herald (Pottsville PA) 05 March 1943.

#twitterstorians #histsex #ElizabethWarren #PregnancyDiscrimination

An example of the lengths school boards would go to in order to push out pregnant teachers and teachers seeking maternity leave at midcentury in PA. School boards would describe these women as incompetent and neglectful.

Source: The Express (Lock Haven PA) 27 Feb 1943

The 1943 PA Supreme Court decision created precedent and allowed other school boards to dismiss pregnant teachers on incompetence grounds.
Source: The Tribune (Scranton PA) 28 May 1943

Unions and educational associations in P moved to mitigate such decisions, not by challenging the notion that visibly pregnant women must leave, but by asking for their right to come back after maternity leave.

Source: The Daily Item (Sunbury PA) 09 Nov 1943.

School boards also punished administrators who refused to enforce these harsh pregnancy policies. In Brooklyn, a school board disciplined a principal for failing to report the pregnancy of a teacher in his school.
Source: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York) 30 July 1942.

In places like Louisiana, the Attorney General ruled that school boards should not grant sabbatical or sick leave to married teachers who become pregnant.

Source: Tensas Gazette (Saint Josepha LA) 14 April 1944.

And in St. Louis Missouri, the school board voted to uphold a law dating to the 19th century that forbade married women from teaching in public schools. Here they debated the role of wives, mothers and the unseemliness of pregnancy.
Source: St. Louis Star and Times 17 Dec 1941