Impact of amendments in Maternity Benefits Act on Women Leadership in India Inc.

Women constitute almost half the population of India (48%) and yet women’s labor force participation rate fell from 34.8% in 1990 to just 26.7% in 2014.

Women are often overlooked for certain jobs due to their gender, and subject to intrusive and personal questions in job interviews.  This disparity between men and women in the workplace means that males dominate corporate hierarchies in India Inc which can be seen in India ranking third lowest in having women in leadership roles.

Women in India not only face a gap in terms of hierarchical ceilings for men and women (fewer, less impactful promotions) but also in wages. WageIndicator, in alliance with IIM-Ahmedabad, recorded the gender pay gap in India for the year 2013 at 24.81%. in 2015, women earned only 56% of what their male colleagues earned for performing the same work. This gap increases with age. They do not receive equal performance appraisals either.

A major cause for all of this is the Indian social construct that still recognizes women as the ‘homemakers’ and not the ‘bread earners’. There is a self-imposed (at times) or societal pressure of choosing family and motherhood responsibilities over career and professional growth which takes its roots from the patriarchal value system instilled in the Indian families.  What earlier used to be limited to the four walls of a home is now getting extended and affecting the workplaces where women have started actively participating and seem claiming merits to their performance but are eventually seen leaving the boardrooms contributing towards increasing responsibilities of family and motherhood.  As a result of which, qualified and much deserved women are not presented with the same opportunities due to the scenario and a well-established assumption that their tenure of work is short lived anyway. This mindset has seen a proactive negative attitude of organizations towards women (irrespective of age group and marital status) into subjecting women not as a resource and talent but only from the lens of a gender who comes to the corporate world for a short stint and no long-term goals.

There are many precedents in India when it comes to women’s employment being terminated on grounds of pregnancy.  In case dating back to 2015, Aarti Khatri Ningoo, a client servicing executive, was asked to leave her job at Eggfirst Advertising, a Mumbai-based company. Ningoo was 5 months pregnant at that time and her maternity leave application had been ignored by Company heads. She was fired on the grounds of “performance deficiency” and “internal badmouthing”. In the 2016 case, Neetu Bala vs Union of India and Others, the appellant was found unfit for a Short Service Commission in the Army Medical Corps. She was 7 months pregnant at that time with no complications. She was initially announced medically fit but was later intimated that she was unfit to join service. She petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court against this discrimination. Such cases are rampant in India because of which women are force to deceive potential employers because there are still concerns about hiring or promoting women of childbearing age – lest they get pregnant and abandon their responsibilities at work.

As discussed before, this mindset makes leadership roles in India Inc. very male dominated. In 2016, women held 16% of senior leadership roles. Indira Nooyi, President and a Member of the Board of Directors at Pepsico shared her experience of trying to balance both work and life as one that involves a lot of coping. In an interview with David Bradley of Atlantic Media, she states that women must constantly cater to their roles as mothers, daughters and wives.

Striking the elusive work-life balance, while climbing the corporate ladder is much more difficult for women than it is for men. Moreover, most women work in lower positions. These women have fewer choices, resources, they’re paid less and they do not have any management skill. This is when women are more likely to drop out of the workforce. But women are just as capable workers as men, in the workplace. Donna Langley (Chairman, Universal Pictures), Jane Fraser (CEO, Citibank), Julie Sweet (CEO, Accenture), Carolyn Everson (VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook/Instagram), Sheryl Sandberg (COO, Facebook), Indra Nooyi (Chairperson/CEO, Pepsico), Chandra Kochhar (CEO, ICICI Bank) and Arundhati Bhattacharya (Director, State Bank of India) are all not only leaders of huge corporations but also budding mothers. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, continued to contribute to her workplace, and satisfy her role despite being pregnant with twins. Susa Wokcicki, CEO of YouTube is a mother to 5 children!

India Inc. in comparison falls behind other countries in terms of women leaders and more so, women leaders who are mothers. India Inc.’s push for increased women’s leadership needs to be seen from both social and economic perspective. Not only is there a need for to nullify the wage gap that exists between men and women, but also to inculcate a work culture that sees women employees no different from their male counterparts. There is also a need to change the mindset that pregnancy is a disability.

The Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act, 2017 (“Act“) aims to aid working women, in their attempt to climb the corporate ladder without compromising on their personal engagements. It intends to inculcate a progressive definition of motherhood. One which does not involve a woman having to give away nearly 10 years of professional work, to nurse and nurture her child in his formative years. It becomes an important step to change the mindset that maternity is a disability. Rather, it wishes to portray maternity as a minor diversion in a woman’s career, from which she can easily recover, without making a huge compromise, and even allows her to work from home during her maternity leave. Lastly, the Act makes it illegal to fire a woman on account of pregnancy.

The Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act, 2017 grants expectant working women 26 weeks of paid maternity leave, and adopting and commissioning mothers (Biological mothers who have children through surrogacy) 12 weeks of maternity leave. It has provisions that allow women to continue to work from home, if the work allows them to, under agreement with their employer. Establishments having 50 or more employees are now mandated to have the facility of a creche or a children’s day care within close distance, where working mothers can go and nurse their children for up to 4 times a day.

The Act intends to become a gender catalyst and allows women to push for gender balance in the workplace. By providing adequate maternity leave, and allowing the mother to take care of her child in his formative months, it makes women no longer obliged to quit their professional engagements due to motherhood. Women can return to their workplace and still not worry about burdening someone else with the duty of taking care of their child, with the mandated creche facilities. This allows women in India Inc. to not only push for higher wages, but also break the male dominated upper echelons of Indian Industries. By being allowed to give greater focus to their profession than earlier, they can now push for higher positions and prove that they are no less than male corporate leaders.

It is unfortunate that India continues to experience a traditional work environment, where women are seen inferior to men, and where the performance is equated with the physical presence of an employee (Earlier, establishments did not entertain working from home. However, The Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act, 2017 is a stepping stone towards creating gender inclusive and diverse workplaces in India.