Gelderland District Court · 27 August 2025 · ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2025:7173
A woman from Zevenaar had a six-month employment contract. Illness linked to pregnancy and childbirth kept her from working, and she recovered after her contract had ended. When she applied for unemployment benefit, UWV said she had worked too few qualifying weeks.
Why extending the reference period was insufficient
The ordinary calculation looked for work in at least 26 of the previous 36 weeks. Extending that reference period for illness still left this worker short. Treating her inability to work because of pregnancy or childbirth like other absences put her at a disadvantage linked to sex, the district court held.
What the court ordered
For this claim the affected weeks had to count as worked weeks. That meant she met the disputed requirement. The court could not determine whether she met the remaining benefit conditions and ordered UWV to make a new decision. The judgment records no immediate award of benefit.
What to check in a refusal
The end of the employment contract, the dates of incapacity and the agency’s week-by-week calculation answered three different questions. Together they showed why an apparently neutral rule had excluded this particular worker.
