Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill – 2017: Has it helped in increasing the number of employed women?
Ester Martinez
LinkedIn Top Voices | CEO, People Matters | TechHR - Asia's Largest HR & Work Tech Conference
Has the “Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill – 2017” helped in closing the gender diversity gap? Has the needle truly moved?
The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was a landmark decision. But a month before its 1st anniversary, we want to ask the question: Has it helped in increasing the number of employed women?
As we published in People Matters then, The one-year-old bill increased the duration of paid maternity leave from 12 weeks (with not more than 6 weeks preceding the expected date of delivery) to 26 weeks (with not more than 8 weeks preceding the expected date of delivery); introduced paid adoption leave (if the adopted child is less than three months old) and paid surrogacy leave of 12 weeks from the date when the child is handed over; and also made mandatory for each establishment with 50 or more employees to have a crèche facility.
It got India among the 16 countries having the longest paid leave for new mothers, with the intent to create a more supportive policy for all working mothers in formal employment. Where many hailed the decision, there were some who thought the demands from employers were unreasonable considering the financial implications, and then there were some who speculated that this will lead to fewer employers employing women.
While many companies took the lead and implemented revised (longer) maternity policy even before the Act came into effect, the reality is that employers are bearing this additional cost by themselves. In most countries with extensive childcare benefits, the government shares some part of the financial costs. Singapore has 16 weeks of paid leave, 8 are funded through public funds; In Australia, Canada the respective maternity leave of (18) and (17) weeks is paid by public funds. In India, however, except for the fraction of employees covered under the Employee State Insurance Act (ESI Act) (i.e. employees earning not more than INR 21,000 per month), maternity benefits have to be financed by the employer.
The question we want to now ask is: Have these extended benefits made it better or worse for women to be employed? Why?
Vice President of Corporate Accounts at EHOB, Inc
6 年Interesting
Research
6 年Oops....poor and immature Uneducated (i.e having only certificates but don't have real knowledge) mentality of Indian and Indian policies can't able to understand the period of maternity for an woman who is going to create three buds .... Birth a baby, create a mother herself and indirectly make her husband as a father. Those things are not written in company policies whether govt. Or private resources. There are no author describing the feelings of a maternity mother in the stages of her 1,2,3 and 3+ trimester in company policies. Indian companies can't be pregnant.... Only growing like virus......
Integrated Marketing Professional | Brand Strategist| Content Curator| StoryTeller | Youtuber | Astro Life Coach
6 年I really don’t think that the companies are still ready for maternity leave as a concept...they do publish articles supporting the bill for PR but rarely honor it in most cases...The highly performing resource becomes the cost centre on declaring pregnancy .It’s UNFORTUNATE fact in our country atleast !!
Author | L&OD Practice Leader | ?? Meditative Arts & Dance Teacher ??? | Mental Health Advocate
6 年The extended benefits have only widened the gender diversity gap. Since the mother has more official leave now, she becomes the primary caretaker of the child. There is no paternity leave in the equation. Both parents unconsciously take up these roles. If anything these extended benefits are making many wary of employing women. Women too are wary of hiring more women; citing now by law they are entitled to more leave. At the Home front, the situation worsens. The mother has the leaves, the Father has to work; thereby further stereotyping gender roles. It ll take holistic policies to close the gender divide and in my opinion, one maternity policy certainly hasn’t helped.
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6 年https://youtu.be/y0oZ_BndIzs