A redditor is the victim of blatant workplace discrimination for having a baby. Reddit of course sides with the company

People feel so entitled these days.

Having a baby is a choice. That does not entitle you to anything. To expect special treatment because you chose to get pregnant is selfish and unfair to the rest of your coworkers who were actually there doing the work necessary to earn their raise.

I don't understand how this is lady bashing. People have restrained from any bashing, or discriminatory comments. The majority of people have said they would have made the same decision as the company, because:

• A promotion is not a right, and being denied one is not a punishment.
• It's simply a business decision to promote those that have provided the most value and work to the company.
• This is nothing to do with gender or the social benefit that women provide by rearing children. If a man was to take paternity leave or go off work for another valuable reason then they would rightfully be treated in just the same way.

Now, I saw only a few reddit users actually bashing women. Perhaps your issue is that they don't believe in Affirmative Action? (I am one of these people, to me Equality means not giving anybody special treatment and actually treating people as equals.)

edit: Don't vote me down, instead provide worthy counterpoints.

The original poster never mentions the country she worked in, and doesn't go into detail to say how good or bad her performance at the workplace was. All we know is that it was a European IT service provider. That could mean that because of her pregnancy the previous months, she was unable to lift computer equipment (if that is the type of IT she is responsible for), had to take assumable legal time off to visit doctors, had to take time to visit the restroom to take care of any sickness or extended time to do her business (Vomiting, etc.,) That is not to say that pregnancy is wrong, but that a pregnant employee may not be able to preform the tasks a non pregnant employee can depending on what stage of pregnancy they are in. There are laws that protect expecting mothers in the workplace (country pending) however, the topic at hand is a performance review. The OP stated that she had taken four months of maternity leave, and had worked the other 8 months of the year. However, we do not know how long ago when the maternity leave was over until the performance review. Let's say her maternity leave ended in mid January, and she has worked at a reduced 25% in hours for the full year. If she did her work well in those hours, acted professionally and such, then there is grounds for discrimination. However, lets say maternity leave ended in Late November, and before that, during the work year, she was going through the stages of pregnancy. Overtime, she would most likely need time to visit doctors etc., and might not be able to preform all tasks. Assuming that, the recent impressions may be that she was at her work peak for a month or two this year, and the rest of the time was spent abiding to her personal duties as a mother to be, I could see why they could say it.

But to be fair to both sides, we do not have enough information to know. The headline of this topic is way off.

A pregnant or woman who has a baby has not special and specific rights. She is entitled to nothing except the right to breast feed the baby.