When you apply for a job in Pennsylvania, an employer is prohibited from asking you about, among other things, your age, race, religion or ancestry.

But he can ask you if you have children. He can ask you when and if you plan to have kids. He can ask if you're married, single, separated or divorced.

And he can refuse to hire you on the basis of your marital or familial status.

You could complain to the state Human Relations Commission, or to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But unless you can prove that applicants from the opposite sex are not being asked the same questions — in effect, prove a negative — you're probably out of luck.

In Pennsylvania, there is nothing illegal about treating employees and prospective employees differently, based on marital or family status. You can be refused a job or refused a promotion simply because, for instance, you're a single parent.

Your familial status affords you some protection when you go for housing, but it's perfectly legal for an apartment owner to ban you on the basis of your marital status. A hotel owner can refuse rooms to unmarried couples. And nothing keeps an employer from allowing personal calls on the job, but frowning on calls to parents from kids.

 Surprised by all of this?

A lot of "very sophisticated, educated" people just assume that it's illegal for employers to ask about a person's marital or family situation, said Leslie Stiles, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission for Women.

Since 2000, bills that would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act — to extend protection to marital and familial status — have languished in the state Legislature. They have been introduced, and reintroduced, repeatedly, and now are stuck in committee.

Some mothers are tired of waiting for the bills — which, in their current inception, are House Bill 280 and Senate Bill 280 — to see the light of day.

A rally in support of the bills will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in the state Capitol Rotunda. The rally is being sponsored by the Pennsylvania Commission for Women, MomsRising.org, a national advocacy group, and Pennsylvania NOW.

Cooper Munroe is a co-founder of TheMotherhood.com, a social network for moms, and a Pittsburgh mother of four. She is helping to coordinate Tuesday's rally.

"Making blanket assumptions about anyone's ability to do a job based on their family status is just plain wrong and doesn't do anyone any good," Munroe said, in an e-mail.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, a co-founder of MomsRising.org, told National Public Radio that it is not illegal in 28 states, Pennsylvania included, for employers to discriminate on the basis of parental or marital status.

Word has gotten out on the Web "that Pennsylvania doesn't protect its moms," Munroe said, noting, "I know we don't want that image here."

Josie Byzek, the spokeswoman for Lancaster NOW, said men, as well as women, need to be protected from bias that is based on their family status.

Byzek, who is the managing editor of a magazine for wheelchair users, recounted the experience of a man she knows whose wife has multiple sclerosis. This man, she said, was finding it hard to get a job when prospective employers asked him about his wife.

An interviewer should be able to ask this man if he could work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, Byzek said, but shouldn't be able to say, " 'We heard you have a wife with MS, and we question whether you can work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday.' "

Stiles of the Pennsylvania Commission for Women agreed that the bill would protect men as well as women. But, she noted, women bear the brunt of discrimination over family status.

Mothers in general — and single mothers especially — face a "real bias" in the workplace, Stiles said. "Men with children are considered more stable, but women with children are considered less stable, from a working perspective," Stiles maintained.

Some employers don't want to have to pay for a single mother's health benefits. Employers worry that a single mother will have to take time off to take sick children to the doctor, Stiles noted.

But everyone has personal issues, Stiles said, contending that people should be "judged on the quality of the work that they do," and not on their personal status

In her experience, Stiles said, mothers tend to be efficient and dedicated workers who, contrary to taking advantage of their employers, tend to "work doubly hard, to prove to everyone that they're superwomen."

Unfortunately, she said, countless women — single mothers, in particular — never even get the chance to be judged on their work.

Michael Hardiman, chief counsel for the state Human Relations Commission, which supports House Bill 280 and Senate Bill 280, pointed to a Cornell University study, which found that there is a "motherhood penalty" in employment.

The study indicated that mothers are likely to be paid less, and are less likely to be hired, than women who don't have children.

Hardiman said his office receives complaints from those who say they encounter workplace discrimination relating to their marital and familial status, and the commission has to tell them that there is no legal protection for them. "We have to explain what the limits of our jurisdiction are," Hardiman said.

Heather Gehron-Rice, a Lancaster resident and mother of two, once lost a part-time job when her boss, a young woman without kids, questioned whether she was putting her children before her "career."

Gehron-Rice, whose husband is in the U.S. Coast Guard, said she was grateful that she had the resources to be able to survive without that job. "If I didn't have my husband's full-time salary, decent living wage and health insurance ... my choices would have been what?" she asked.

Kiki Peppard knew what her choices were: She either had to work to support her kids, or she had to go on welfare.

Peppard, who lives, appropriately enough, in a town in the Poconos called Effort, is the driving force behind the pending legislation on marital and familial status.

Now a clerical worker at East Stroudsburg University, Peppard moved to Pennsylvania from New York in 1994, with two school-age children. She said she was turned away over and over again by prospective employers, because she was a single mother.

When she was interviewing for a job as a legal secretary, the lawyer conducting the interview asked her if she was married. Peppard said she asked him why he needed to know, and he said he figured that a married woman would use her husband's health benefits. He told her that since he was going to "get stuck paying" for her benefits, he'd pay her less.

Peppard said she insisted that he read her resume and her references. He then asked her how she was feeding her children without a job. When she told him that she'd been forced to go on welfare, she said, "he literally threw my application at me."

Humiliated, Peppard started talking to other women, and found that other women simply "denied the existence of their children" when applying for jobs. They'd tell their kids, "Don't call mommy at work."

"How can we exist in a society where women have to lie about the births of their children?" Peppard asked.

Peppard contacted the EEOC and the state Human Relations Commission. When she was told that no law prevented employers from asking the questions she had been asked, she started working to get bills written to amend the state's Human Relations Act.

More than a decade later, Peppard still is working to get the bills passed. She got a boost when MomsRising heard of her struggle, and featured her in a documentary titled "The Motherhood Manifesto," about the challenges plaguing moms in the work force.

After dealing with years of indifference from the media and legislators, Peppard is hopeful that Tuesday's rally will have an impact.

State legislators, she said, "need to know that mothers are united. We are real people, and we have real needs, and they need to recognize us."

Said Peppard: "Sooner or later, they're going to get it."

State Rep. Michael Sturla, a Democrat from Lancaster, is a sponsor of House Bill 280. He said he really can't predict whether the bill will be passed. "To me it's one of those human rights issues," Sturla said. "There's no reason why something like this shouldn't move."

Brian W. Kelly, director of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, said that at this point, his organization has no official position on the bills. "It's kind of watch and wait and see for us at the chamber," he said.

Kelly said he was wary, however, of the risks of opening up the Human Relations Act, and amending it. "Any time you open a statute up, you run the risk of unintended consequences," he said, noting that same-sex marriage advocates "are looking for an opportunity to have their issues addressed as well."

"There are instances where women are being discriminated against in the workplace, and frankly, that shouldn't happen," Kelly said.

But, he said, "Any additional changes that would have a direct adverse impact on the business community would be met with resistance from the chamber."

Leslie Stiles asserted that it "really would be in the economic interest of the state to fix this."

"If we want a family structure, and it's what this country is built on, then you have to allow mothers to be mothers," Stiles said, adding, "The reality is, when families thrive, communities thrive and when communities thrive, nations thrive."

Byzek of Lancaster NOW agreed. "We can support families, or we cannot support families — and for me, this really is about that," she said.

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Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.