Countries around the world have taken progressive steps to take care of their female workers. One of the most ardently advocated issues by both women’s rights groups and labour rights activists is paid maternity leaves. It is an extremely essential need for the well-being and financial condition of our country’s female workforce. Germany is one country which especially takes care of its female workforce in this regard. The International Labour Organization’s report on Maternity and Paternity Leave which was published in 2014 analysed the average number of weeks provided as maternity leave. The oldest ILO conventions (Convention 3 and Convention 103) set the minimum required number of weeks to be provided as maternity leave as somewhere between twelve and thirteen weeks. Convention 183 which was the most recent Convention before the 2014 report mandated leave of fourteen weeks. Convention 183 was accompanied by Recommendation 191 which took a step further by extending recommended weeks up to 18. In India, one of the first legitimate recognition of this need of paid maternity leaves was seen when the Indian legislature introduced the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. Its contemporary addition was passed in the year 2017.
Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017
India, in 2017 passed the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 which extends the mandated maternity leave to meet the minimum standards set by the ILO. The government faced a substantial backlash following this Act’s introduction and mainly from institutional bodies such as Federation of Small and Medium Enterprises who contended that because of such an Act there was an increase in cost, hiring female employees. They claimed that as employers, it became more and more difficult for them to pay for such long maternity leaves. We need to avoid taking this problematic view as this narrative where we put labour in the sphere of a market above the labour put into raising a child. We live in a welfare state where it becomes the State’s responsibility, to protect women’s interests, to support the value of the labour of care more than it supports the labour in the market sphere. We, as a society, need to stop seeing the labour of care as less important than the economic interests of employers just because there are no monetary interests involved in the former.
Drawbacks
One of the most criticised aspects of the Amendment is given under Section 3(A)(ii) which states that although women are entitled to a 26 weeks maternity leave for first two children, for the third child, only twelve weeks of maternity leave would be provided. Now, the policymakers have shown a lack of a tenable rationale which can be used to justify this decision. It is assumed that the birth of a third child would not have the same impact on a woman’s life as it did with the birth of the first two children. It is utterly disappointing to see how ignorant our policymakers are to female anatomy and other effects of childbirth that women need to take care of.
Another important point to be made here is that putting the sole responsibility of paying for the woman’s maternity benefit on the employer can have regressive results as it would discourage employers from employing females to avoid maternity costs. The ILO introduced the brilliant idea of maintaining a fund for social insurance to take care of it. This wouldn’t put the burden on the employer and would not discourage the employment of women. This was mentioned in Convention 183 which was not ratified by India showing a lack of political will to commit to such a move.
