Recently in Australia on one of those current affairs shows showed how pregnant women were discriminated against in the workforce, where one woman was dismissed after her employer found she was pregnant and the other was told, either keep the baby and lose your job or lose the baby and keep your job.  This still happens even with proper laws to protect employees I can tell you.  Well I've had my fair share of discrimination whilst pregnant with my first child in the workforce. 

But with my second pregnancy I was a full time virtual assistant already.  None of my clients even knew I was pregnant until I emailed them a month before I was due to go in for my c/section informing them that I will not be available for six days.  My work never faltered, my quality of work never diminished leading up to the childbirth.  I worked till the night before I gave birth.  My clients were dumbstruck actually when I told them I was going into hospital.  They didn’t even know I was pregnant and they didn't even get a chance to try to discriminate against me. 

I also am not discriminated against for being the stereotypical blonde, who must be dumb of course, because I have long blonde hair, nope, several of my clients have no idea what I even look like.  And same goes for other things like religion and race and age, we are lucky as virtual assistants not to have to put up with discrimination like conventional bricks and mortar workers do.

Back to my story; then I came out of hospital and went straight back to work, picking up one local client's work off my porch, the day I came home from hospital.  No maternity leave for us VAs, but instead I seamlessly continued on with my work and no client has ever had cause to complain as I work around my two children now.  We virtual assistants are quite capable with producing quality work for our clients whilst raising families.

Being a pregnant VA and having no discrimination targeted at me was yet another major benefit of being a virtual assistant that I really never thought of before until now.

Sandra Fraser is a virtual assistant and also creator of  www.virtual-assistant-advice.com which is an information site for WAHMs, prospective and existing virtual assistants and for those wishing to find a VA.