Kerre McIvor: When will those sexist Neanderthals learn?

There were plenty of other men and women who piped up on the subject of the possibility of Jacinda Ardern having children.

What a cringeworthy moment when AM host Mark Richardson told new Labour leader Jacinda Ardern that the country needed to know whether or not she intended to have children.

What planet was he on? Maybe Richardson was trying for shock value but looking back at the video clip, it appeared to me that he genuinely felt employers had a right to get inside the minds and bodies of their female interviewees.

He also seemed to assume that anybody doing the hiring and firing would be male because when he talked about employers, he only ever used the masculine third person pronoun.

How very Neanderthal. Ardern handled his comments with dignity and class. The Labour leader said she was okay to answer questions about the issue of women trying to combine work and family because she had talked about the dilemma so many women in the workforce face in a previous interview.

She accepted that It was her choice to raise the issue at the time and she appeared resigned to the fact that she would have to continue to answer questions on the subject.

But what she, and many other people objected to, was Richardson's assumption that employers had a right to know. They don't. Not legally. Not any which way.

Just to be clear, under the Human Rights Act of 1993, it's against the law for an employer to discriminate against a current or potential employee on the grounds of being pregnant or wanting to have children in the future.

Whatever. I'm sure, if there are employers who are so inclined, there are myriad ways they can weasel around the law to try to get the information they want. Some, according to talkback callers and texters, flout the law completely and just come right out and ask.

And I have absolutely no doubt for some employers it is really frustrating and costly to have a staff member disappear for six weeks, or six months, or two years or forever, while they're off raising a human. In the same way it's frustrating and costly to have a staff member go on extended sick leave or take leave without pay to care for elderly parents or take time off to do whatever they need to do.

Good employers understand that life happens and they make allowances accordingly.

And if some employers choose to reject potential employees who are female and of child bearing age, in this tight labour market, they're the ones who'll end up missing out.

But what really, really got up my snozz was what Richardson's comments exemplified.

Not just Richardson's - there were plenty of other men and women who piped up on the subject.

It's the attitude of ownership so many people have when it comes to women - and particularly women's bodies.

You hear it all the time. Opinions on what she wears. Where she goes, at what time and with whom. Who she has sex with and how many people she has sex with. When she's going to have a child. Whether she's too young or too old to have a child. What she ingests while she's pregnant. Whether the baby comes out of her vagina or her womb. Whether she breastfeeds. How she parents. When she should go back to work. Why she went back to work. Why she never had a child.

On and on and on it goes. Men simply do not have this incessant scrutiny around their bodies and their behaviours.

You know what happens if the Labour leader becomes Prime Minister and gets pregnant? She'll get a big stomach and she'll have a baby. And if she's like most other working women, she and her partner will arrange childcare and she'll go back to work.

Or she may choose not to. It will be entirely up to her.

Historically, New Zealand has had dipsomaniac prime ministers, we've had (politically speaking) impotent prime ministers; we've had prime ministers die in office. The country has survived.

And take a look around the world at the leaders currently in power. Being pregnant is not the worst thing a politician can be.