However additional rights were introduced concerning pregnancy and maternity leave, The Employment Protection (consolidation) Act, 1978 and the Social Security Act 1986, these two Acts give four rights to pregnant employees:.
(i) the right not to be unfairly dissmissed because of pregnancy;.
(ii) the right to return to the same job after confinement;.
(iii) the right to paid time off for ante-natal care;.
(iv) the right to Statutory Maternity Pay. (A.E. Morris, S.M. Nott 1991) .
However, the employee does not qualify for the right to maternity leave unless she has been working for her employer for sixteen hours per week for two years; in this case these laws to protect women during their pregnancy are innefectual if they do not meet the requirements, which consequently may result in them losing their job. .
The Sex Discrimination Act also has limitations concerning attitudes, 'One set of considerations concern the inherent limits of law in changing the nature of society' (April Carter 1988), deep rooted attitudes cannot be simply changed because of a new law being passed, also similarly, another drawback is the attitude and acceptance of the Act by male workers and employers; The London School of Economics (LSE), carried out research on both the Sex Discrimiation Act and the Equal Pay Act between 1974 and 1977 to test their effectiveness in maintaining womens rights, it was found that in a small number of cases the law was not being upheld, but more startling evidence was clearly emerging that employers were changing methods, (within the law) of reclassifying job descriptions, recruitment, and promotion etc. in order to ignore the Sex Discrimination Act and continue in segregating men and women within employment. It was discovered from research in 1979 by the Equal Opportunities Commission that the Sex Discrimination Act 'appeared to have a very limited impact' (April Carter 1988), of 768 establishments surveyed, only 18% had changed their practice in order to meet the required standards of the Act.