It took Deema, 40 years old, some time to settle into the company car. She is in the final three months of her pregnancy. She groaned deeply, settling into the driver's seat. Then she heard one of her managers speak.
“If it is difficult for her, why does she continue to work? She should stay at home”, he said.
The words hurt Deema deeply and caused her severe emotional distress. It was not the first time she had heard unpleasant comments in relation to her pregnancy. They had started after a series of pressures at the organisation she worked for in rural Idlib, which focused on women and children’s issues. Deema believes management subtly pushed her to leave her job since they found out she was pregnant.
Deema did leave her job after a year in the role, choosing to depart on good terms before giving birth to avoid any further complications, particularly after the other staff members informed her that she would not be granted adequate maternity leave and would not be able to take the breastfeeding breaks stipulated in labour laws.
The organisation Deema worked for offered limited maternity leave; one week for a natural birth and fifteen days for a caesarean section. Many women in Syria accept similar conditions because of the difficulty in finding work with better conditions and consideration for personal and family duties.
Employee legislation for pregnant women
Many workplaces in Syria contravene the law. Article 121 of Law No. 17, 2010, states, “paragraph (a), that a female employee who has been employed continuously by the employer for six months is entitled to maternity leave on full pay for a period of 120 days for the first birth, 90 days for the second birth, and 75 days for the third birth…paragraph (d) a female employee may take an additional one-month period of unpaid maternity leave following the expiry of the aforementioned leave”.
Additionally, Article 122 says "paragraph (a), prohibits an employer from dismissing a female employee or terminating her employment during maternity leave”.
Lina Taha, a specialist in gender justice and women’s empowerment, explains that there is a distinction in the approaches to female staff in international organisations and local civil society organisations. Within the framework of international organisations, such violations are prohibited; women can file a report, have their rights upheld, and see the perpetrator punished.
"These organisations offer maternity or paternity leave; the former lasts 60 days and the latter just one month. Both are paid and can be split as required. Women can also take partial or unpaid leave after their paid leave has ended, without this affecting the terms of their contract”, says Lina.
She points out that whilst some employers refuse to hire pregnant women, international organisations’ recruitment programmes do not allow for this, prohibiting the recruitment department from asking a woman during a job interview whether she is pregnant.
“Some local associations may commit such violations, depriving women of their right to leave or perhaps even employment during pregnancy”, she says. Taha recalls an experience she had whilst working with an international organisation that provides funding to local associations, where one of the employees was dismissed before giving birth. The organisation issued a warning to the association, instructing it to reinstate the woman and grant her the right to maternity leave, noting that failure by organisations to comply with these guidelines could result in the suspension of their funding.
"Engagement with civil society organisations must be based on partnership and the type of funding. At the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where I currently work, we always take parental leave into account in our partnerships, as this supports the social roles of both parents and challenges prevailing social norms; fathers must share in the tasks of caring for the child and creating a balanced family”.
In her book Feminism: Concepts and Issues, the author Mayya Al-Rahbi writes: “Some regard these laws relating to motherhood as positive discrimination in favour of women, whereas in reality they constitute positive discrimination in favour of society, since childbearing is a matter that concerns society as a whole and not women alone”.
Silent dismissals
The reality is that several Syrian women have faced harassment during their pregnancies, even whilst working for international organisations. Some organisations exploit pregnant women’s vulnerable position both within and outside the country. This was the case for Zeina (40), who suddenly found herself dismissed from her job and unable to claim entitlements because she was working in Beirut on an irregular contract.
Between 2014 and 2021, Zeina worked for an international organisation affiliated with a German pro-labour rights party, in the Syrian department. She describes her first few years of work as positive, but with a change in management and the arrival of a new director, Zeina and other colleagues were subjected to racist remarks on several occasions. Zeina decided to lodge a complaint with the organisation’s management in Germany. Her director found out about the complaint, and rather than refraining from her abusive behaviour, she went even further in harassing Zeina and holding her excessively accountable for any mistake she made.
When Zeina’s manager discovered she was pregnant, she suggested that Zeina reduce her working hours. Zeina refused and confronted her manager, informing her that her request was against the law. Zeina said she might take the matter to court if it was enforced. The manager then turned the matter into a political issue, as Zeina put it, arguing that a legal complaint would lead to the closure of the office and the loss of the employees’ livelihoods. Zeina was then dismissed and awarded compensation amounting to only three months worth of pay.
Zeina is now a refugee in Germany with her four-year-old son: “I went through a difficult emotional period towards the end of my job, during which I was constantly crying. After I was made redundant, I faced financial difficulties, which were among the reasons that led to the breakdown of my marriage and my decision to leave Lebanon”.
Zeina is disappointed in the head of department’s lack of action from the Berlin office. She advised Zeina not to take any action, explaining that, as a local employee in Lebanon, German labour laws did not apply to her, and that decisions regarding hiring and dismissal rested solely with the manager in Lebanon.
Sally’s experience, working for an organisation conducting in-depth feminist research in Syria, was no better. When she became pregnant, she suffered from severe fatigue during the first few months, but her workload increased rather than being reduced. “I became slower than before, and this exposed me to comments and bullying; although they didn’t focus on the fact that I was pregnant, they didn’t take it into account at all!” she reported.
In her conversation with SyriaUntold, Sally recalls how she was asked to juggle several tasks at once, and when she fell behind on one of them, she was severely reprimanded. “I was given several responsibilities at a very sensitive time, and the pressure of work exacerbated my pregnancy-related depression”, she recalls. “I remember one time I went into the bathroom and started crying so hard that I threw up. I was ill for several days after that incident”.
Once her pregnancy was over, the company asked Sally to change the terms of her contract so that her pay would be linked to the amount of work she completed, which would reduce her income without necessarily reducing her working hours. Sally felt at the time that what was happening amounted to indirect dismissal; “I couldn’t take it in my stride. How could feminists not understand what happens during pregnancy? The strange thing was that everyone was trying to convince me that changing my contract was better for me, even though celebrating the permanence of contracts was the norm. It was psychological manipulation. I stopped working with that organisation of my own accord afterwards because the tasks assigned to me were decreasing over time, and I needed to look for other sources of income anyway”.
In hindsight, Sally considers her pregnancy to have been the worst experience of her life, due to the pressure she was under and the severe impact this had on her mental health, which led to a strained relationship with her child and a reluctance to have another child.
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Reduced working hours were a recurring theme among many of the women who spoke to SyriaUntold. Fidaa was an employee at an organisation funded by the EU, working in Damascus in the field of vocational training for women. Initially, her contract stipulated that she would receive a fixed salary at the end of each month, but as her due date approached, management suggested she switch to a training contract. “I lost the opportunity to receive paid maternity leave, and I also lost the fixed salary I was relying on to cover the expenses of my newborn”, she said. Fidaa reluctantly accepted this change, as did Sally and many other women, due to the lack of other job opportunities in Syria, security pressures, and the informal nature of most work arrangements, amidst the economic challenges the country is facing.
A study carried out by the organisation ‘Women Now for Development’, entitled ‘Women and Feminist Organisations in Syria’, confirms that many civil society organisations have a policy of terminating the employment contracts of pregnant women or women who have given birth.
Lack of privacy
Many organisations fail to take women’s social circumstances and family commitments into account, and colleagues tend to have prejudices, questioning pregnant women’s commitment to their work if they ask for their personal time to be respected. Many pregnant women also take on the domestic responsibilities in the work environment, even though their job description does not require them to do so.
Deema’s work as an instructor for an organisation was divided between fieldwork and remote administrative duties. Management would contact her at any time they pleased, even late at night, on the pretext of exempting female staff from office work and to accommodate the time difficulties faced by some of them. “This meant my working hours were open-ended, which caused me great embarrassment and stress, and kept me away from my child who needs me”, said Deema. She subsequently left that job for these reasons.
For Fidaa, the nature of her work as a trainer became a problem in itself; her salary dropped significantly, forcing her to take on several training assignments in the same month. Her working hours increased beyond those she spent in the office, and consequently she had to pay more money for childcare. This caused problems at home, due to time spent preparing for the training sessions and teaching materials. She eventually found herself forced to leave her job.
The roots of discrimination
Amal Hamidouch, a researcher and activist on women’s issues and rights, explains that through her work, including examining the situation of female employees in civil society and workplaces, she has observed several violations, notably the almost complete denial of adequate maternity leave.
Amal told SyriaUntold that in the majority of cases examined women were granted leave of no more than a week or ten days for birth, during which they were sometimes still forced to work. Others face dismissal or the termination of their contracts due to pregnancy, or did not have their contracts renewed around the same time as informing their employer they were pregnant. Some faced reduced duties and responsibilities whilst pregnant, under the pretext of ‘taking their health into account’, behaviour Amal views as marginalising and punitive, rather than supportive.
These circumstances have often led women to conceal their pregnancies for fear of losing their jobs, a painful indication of job insecurity.
Amal believes the main reason for the persistence of these violations is the lack of oversight and accountability. A large proportion of organisations are licensed in Europe or in countries such as Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, but employees and employers are not subject to the laws of the countries in which they are licensed, nor to Syrian law.
Additionally, Amal believes the patriarchal mindset within the management of organisations is a problem. The majority of managers are men who pay little attention to women’s rights. Subsequently, the organisations’ internal regulations do not take into account women’s rights or gender sensitivity, as women are not involved in drafting them.
According to Amal’s estimates, the persistence of workplace violations is also linked to funding, as some organisations genuinely wish to grant women their rights, but lack the dedicated funding to employ a pregnant woman, find a replacement for her, and grant her paid leave. This is the case with women’s organisations that do not have considerations for pregnant employees or mothers. “Unfortunately, women are forced to accept this, as they need to work given the difficult economic circumstances. In Syria, there are women’s and human rights organisations that can support them, and the media has a role to play, but the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour must protect the rights of women working in civil society organisations in accordance with Syria’s Labour Law, which explicitly stipulates the right to maternity leave”.
Women are struggling to find jobs, yet the social pressure to start a family remains intense. When a woman chooses to have children, her life is thrown into turmoil, yet she dares not challenge or exploit the existing employment systems. This plunges pregnant and working mothers into a spiral of self-blame and financial stress, which leaves lasting psychological scars. This reality is particularly paramount for those working in organisations whose mission is to defend their rights and needs.
