Pregnancy discrimination in Singapore: what protects your job, and what to do

In Singapore, being pregnant does not stop an employer from ever letting you go. But the law protects the maternity pay you were due, if two things were true before your employer gave you notice that your job would end. You had worked there for at least 3 months, and a doctor had certified your pregnancy.

With both in place, your employer must still pay your maternity benefits if it dismisses you without sufficient cause or retrenches you. Maternity benefits means the pay for the maternity leave you qualify for. Without sufficient cause means without a good enough reason, and to retrench you is to let you go because your job is no longer needed.

That protection sits in the Employment Act 1968 and the Child Development Co-Savings Act 2001, the two laws behind maternity leave here. Dismissing you while you are on maternity leave is an offence, meaning the employer would be breaking the law.

A dismissal for poor performance must rest on relevant and objective performance criteria, meaning measures that fit the job and can be checked. The employer has to prove the poor performance it cites.

If you think you were let go because of the pregnancy, the claim goes to the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM), within 2 months of your baby’s birth. TADM was set up by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the unions and employers: the three sides that “tripartite” refers to. It advises on work disputes and mediates them, which means helping you and your employer reach an agreement.

Being passed over or moved aside is different. Today that goes to the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), which takes complaints about unfair treatment at work.

A wider law, the Workplace Fairness Act 2025, will make it unlawful for an employer to decide against you at work because you are pregnant. It is scheduled to take effect by end-2027.

Below are the rules, the steps to take in order if it happens to you, and the records to keep from the day you tell your employer.

What protects your job while you are pregnant

MOM calls this maternity protection. Two conditions decide whether you have it. Both must be true before you receive the notice of dismissal or retrenchment:

• You have worked for your employer for at least 3 months.
• A medical practitioner, meaning a doctor, has certified that you are pregnant.

The second condition is easy to miss early on, when you may not have seen a doctor yet. Our guide on when to see a doctor to confirm a pregnancy covers that first visit.

With both conditions met, your employer must pay the maternity benefits you would have been eligible for if it ends your job without sufficient cause while you are pregnant. The same holds if it retrenches you during the pregnancy. In plain words, letting you go does not wipe out the maternity pay you were on track to get.

How much that is depends on your child and your job, as of October 2026. If your child is a Singapore citizen and you meet the other conditions, you get 16 weeks of Government-Paid Maternity Leave (GPML). If not, you get 12 weeks under the Employment Act, as long as the Act covers you and you meet its conditions.

The rules are firmer once your leave starts. MOM says it is an offence for an employer to dismiss an employee while she is on maternity leave.

Two sections of the Employment Act carry the protection. Section 84 is for a notice of dismissal given without sufficient cause, and section 84A for one given because your job is redundant (no longer needed) or the company is reorganising. MOM’s figures on pregnancy-related dismissal claims, further down, count claims under these two sections.

Can you be dismissed for poor performance while pregnant?

Yes, but only on the record. Employers should assess pregnant employees on their merits and the needs of the job, says MOM’s guidance on poor performance. If an employer decides to dismiss, the decision “must be based on relevant and objective performance criteria”.

The Tripartite Guidelines on Wrongful Dismissal add two rules. MOM publishes these guidelines to show when a dismissal is wrongful, meaning made without just or sufficient cause: a fair and good enough reason. Mediators at TADM refer to them, and so does the tribunal that hears the claims mediation does not settle.

• When an employer gives poor performance as the reason, the employer has to prove it. If it cannot, the dismissal is wrongful.
• Poor performance alone is not a reason to dismiss you without notice, that is, at once with no notice period. Only misconduct is, such as theft or dishonest conduct at work.

In the guidelines, a fair dismissal for poor performance looks like this: a worker’s supervisor wrote down her shortcomings in performance reviews, and her work did not improve. So whether any shortcomings of yours were written down, and when, can count.

Being dismissed with no reason at all is judged on the facts around it. In one case in the guidelines, an employee with 3 years’ service told her employer she was pregnant and was dismissed with notice soon after, with no maternity benefits paid. The guidelines treat that dismissal as aimed at depriving her of those benefits, for three reasons:

• The employer could not give a legitimate reason for the dismissal.
• She was dismissed shortly after she told the employer about the pregnancy.
• Her maternity benefits were not paid.

Can you be retrenched while pregnant, and do you still get maternity pay?

Retrenchment means losing your job because the company has more staff than it needs, is restructuring, or no longer needs your role. The wrongful dismissal guidelines treat redundancy, the reason behind a retrenchment, as a legitimate reason to dismiss with notice.

MOM calls this protection against retrenchment, and spells it out in terms of pay. If you meet the two conditions above, an employer that retrenches you during your pregnancy must still pay the maternity benefits you would have been eligible for.

The reason given also has to be true. In another of the guidelines’ examples, an employee was told his job would no longer exist, then found his old post still open and filled by someone else. Because the reason was shown to be false, the dismissal was wrongful.

If you have worked there for less than three months

MOM’s maternity protection starts at 3 months with the employer, counted to the day you receive the notice. Before that, the rule that keeps your maternity benefits safe on a dismissal does not apply.

MOM’s general rules on wrongful dismissal still do. A dismissal without just or sufficient cause is wrongful, and MOM lists dismissal on discriminatory grounds as wrongful. That means a dismissal because of a personal trait or circumstance, such as gender or family responsibilities.

You file this kind of claim at TADM within one month from your last day of work, a much shorter window than the maternity claim. One exception sits in the same rules. Managers and executives dismissed with notice, or with salary paid in place of notice, can only file a wrongful dismissal claim after at least 6 months with the employer.

Passed over or moved aside, but not dismissed

A promotion that goes to someone else, a project taken away, a shift to a role with less weight: none of these is a dismissal, because none ends your job. So the dismissal claim at TADM does not cover them. The exception is being pushed out: MOM counts a resignation you did not choose freely as a dismissal.

For these, the place to go today is TAFEP. It gives advice and help on discriminatory workplace practices until the Workplace Fairness Act starts.

Between 2019 and 2025, TAFEP received 49 complaints of pregnancy-related discrimination. MOM gave that count in a written answer of 7 October 2026, its reply in writing to a question in Parliament.

Where there is evidence of discrimination, TAFEP refers the complaint to MOM to investigate. Depending on how serious the case is, MOM can require the employer to fix the lapses in its HR (human resources) processes, or suspend its access to foreign workers.

That route acts on the employer. A claim for compensation over pregnancy-related discrimination at hiring, promotion or training comes with the Workplace Fairness Act, which has not started yet.

What to do if it happens, in order

Sort it out inside the company first, then go outside it. MOM’s advice on maternity leave disputes and TAFEP both give that order. Here is how we’d take it, one step at a time.

1. Write down what happened while it is fresh: who said what, on which date, and anything you were sent.
2. Raise it with your employer first, through the company’s grievance channel, its set way for staff to raise a complaint. Your employee handbook or intranet usually names it. If the problem is your supervisor, go to another manager you trust, then to HR.
3. If you are a union member, ask your union to help you raise it with management.
4. If you were passed over or moved aside and the company cannot sort it out, or has no channel for it, contact TAFEP for advice.
5. If you were dismissed or retrenched and not paid your maternity benefits, speak to TADM first through its Ask TADM chatbot or an appointment with an advisory officer. Then file a wrongful dismissal claim at TADM, after the dismissal and within 2 months of your baby’s birth.
6. If mediation at TADM does not settle it, TADM gives you a claim referral certificate. With it, you can take the claim to the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT), the tribunals in the Singapore Courts that hear employment claims.

In mediation the TADM officer is neutral, and no one rules on who is right; a ruling comes later, at the tribunal, if it gets that far. MOM also lists legal help as an option at any point.

To file the maternity claim, you must be covered by the Employment Act or the Child Development Co-Savings Act. If you are not sure you are, ask TADM before the 2-month window closes.

If what happened leaves you anxious or low, two helplines are there for you. Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) is on 1767, open 24 hours, and the Institute of Mental Health’s helpline is on 6389 2222.

The records to keep

Start a folder the day you tell your employer, even if all goes well. Each record below matches something the rules above turn on, and most are hard to rebuild later.

• Your start date. Your letter of appointment, the letter that offered you the job, shows whether you had 3 months with the employer when the notice came.
• Your doctor’s certification. Keep the document that confirms your pregnancy, with its date, since it has to come before the notice.
• The day you told your employer. An email or message is better than a conversation, because timing is one of the signs the guidelines weigh.
• The notice itself. Keep the letter of dismissal or retrenchment, with its date and any reason it gives. A reason later shown to be false makes a dismissal wrongful.
• Your performance reviews. If the employer cites poor performance, it has to prove it, and its own reviews are where that proof would be.
• Your payslips. They show what you were paid, and whether any maternity pay came.

Where your employer gave no reason, the record matters even more. For a dismissal with notice, MOM says it is you who must show proof that the dismissal was wrongful.

What MOM’s figures show

MOM’s written answer to Parliament of 7 October 2026 counted the claims. Between April 2019 and 2025, 387 pregnancy-related wrongful dismissal claims were filed at TADM under sections 84 and 84A of the Employment Act.

Most never reached a tribunal. TADM resolved 301 of the 387 claims, or 78%, through mediation.

The other 86 got claim referral certificates, and MOM counted 72 claims filed at the ECT. The ECT awarded compensation to the employee in 27 of those 72, or 38%.

Put simply, about four in five claims ended at mediation. Of the claims that went on to the tribunal, fewer than four in ten ended with compensation for the employee. In that answer, MOM gave no amounts for the mediated claims, and no reason why 14 certificates did not become ECT claims.

What the Workplace Fairness Act will change

Parliament passed the Workplace Fairness Bill on 8 January 2025. A Bill is a law in draft form, before Parliament passes it. A second one, the Workplace Fairness (Dispute Resolution) Bill, which sets out how claims will be handled, passed on 4 November 2025.

MOM says the Workplace Fairness Act is scheduled to take effect by end-2027, with no exact date as of its answer of 7 October 2026. Until the Act starts, everything above is what applies.

Once it starts, it will be unlawful for an employer to make an adverse employment decision, one that works against you, because of a protected characteristic. A protected characteristic is a trait the Act lists, and pregnancy is one. The decisions it covers include hiring, performance appraisal (your work review), training, promotion and dismissal, so the turns that the dismissal rules miss come in too.

It also changes what you can do about it:

• You will be able to file a claim for compensation with TADM over pregnancy-related discrimination at any of those stages, not only dismissal.
• Employers will have to set up a process for handling grievances. A dispute is meant to go through it first. If that fails, mediation comes before any claim can go to the ECT or the High Court.
• MOM will be able to direct an employer to put a breach right, and to impose financial penalties, which are fines.

It will not reach every workplace. As passed, the Act does not apply to employers with fewer than 25 employees, a number the Minister can change. Alongside it, the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices, which set out fair and merit-based practice for employers, will continue to cover discrimination on other grounds.

Your next step: check what maternity pay you are owed

The protection on this page is worth what your maternity benefits are worth. Those turn on the same conditions: your months with the employer, your child’s citizenship, and which law covers you. Read our parental leave guide next to see which maternity leave and pay you qualify for, so you know what an employer would still owe you if it let you go.

Wei Chun

Founder & Editor

A Singapore parent writing the guide he wished he'd had — practical, calm, and grounded in what actually works.

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