This Airline Made Female Interviewees Take Pregnancy Tests

There are plenty of stories of airline employees behaving badly, but after hearing about (opens in new tab) what prospective female employees for the Spanish airline Iberia went through, it seems like there's WTFery at every level of the airline industry.

A recent New York Times piece (opens in new tab) reported that after much backlash, Iberia Airlines was no longer asking female potential employees to take pregnancy tests. If you felt a vein in your head start to throb, same, same. That's right: Iberia Airlines had been requiring all female job candidates to take a pregnancy test.

One exceptionally ridiculous part of this whole saga is the fact that Iberia Airlines defended their practice on the grounds that it actually protected female employees, as there are health risks for pregnant people in their third trimester. Their company health and safety officer shared:

Yes, there are health risks for people flying in their third trimesters. Yet to build pregnancy into your job application process is pretty gross. Many occupations include some element that could *potentially* harm a pregnant person, but treating that as a blanket assumption is bizarre.

Spain has laws banning gender discrimination and, surprise, this policy tends to affect one gender more than any other. It still remains strange why Iberia Airlines mandated those tests in the first place.

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