
Businesses always start out small and then eventually get large. You can’t expect a business to grow overnight to the point where they are able to do that. For example a local security company near me has maybe 15 employees right now while they wait on deals and things like that. They couldn’t afford maternity leave until they grow.
No usually they can’t. Most business don’t take out loans and try to do things from scratch. It should be written in the contract that gets signed, but if they don’t make enough to be able to do but make enough to pay employees then no. An example would be if they make 19 an hr that’s almost 20k that they have to come up with. At that point they shouldn’t hire a woman until they do get larger and then it would be discrimination