Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children during an interview, there's an unfortunate side-effect the market has adapted to: under-the-hood discrimination against young woman candidates.
All other factors being equal, an employer knows a young woman could get pregnant and will probably quit to take care of the kids (going by statistics alone). So since they can't explicitly ask those things, the market prices in the risk by devaluing woman candidates in every legal way possible.
> Because it's not legal to even ask about pregnancy or desire for children during an interview
It's not illegal to ask about these things, but it's illegal to make a hiring decision based on these factors and asking during an interview would be pretty strong evidence of using the information in hiring.
All other factors being equal, an employer knows a young woman could get pregnant and will probably quit to take care of the kids (going by statistics alone). So since they can't explicitly ask those things, the market prices in the risk by devaluing woman candidates in every legal way possible.
It's downright insidious.