Even as women move centre stage in many organisations worldwide, there are still pockets within the business community who do not employ enough women, mainly on account of the maternity benefits payable to them as per law. At least in the Indian context, this thinking among startup promoters/entrepreneurs has been brought out through a survey to coincide with the International Women’s Day falling on March 8.
The present government amended the Maternity Benefits Act to provide for 26 weeks (around 6 months) of paid leave, against the earlier 12 weeks (3 months). A survey done by LocalCircles, that covered startups and SMEs has thrown up some interesting responses.
At the outset, of the 8,500 people surveyed by LocalCircles, a sizeable number said this increase in the period of paid leave for maternity to six months has discouraged them from recruiting more women in their organisations. In fact, 33% said that they don’t recruit women at all, while another 16% said they have scaled down the number of women employees recruited compared to previous years. The remaining 51% were split 33% who said no change in their approach and 18% who said they have hired more women in their companies.
The question was put to the survey participants as to what in their opinion was the right way to go about it. Here, 37% said the paid leave period should be restored to 3 months and 44% had no issues with the 6-month change brought about. Just 6% said it should be brought down to 1 month while another 6% said there should be no maternity leave at all.
There was also the proposal in 2018, by the Ministry of Labour & Employment, of creating a corpus of around Rs 400 crore to reimburse employers for 7 weeks of the extended maternity benefit. The ministry doesn’t appear to have moved forward on this proposal. LocalCircles, which did this survey has said it will be making a submission of this report to the Ministry of Labour & Employment. Hopefully, the ministry can wake up to the reality.
The issue here is while the government wants to benefit women, such legal stipulations force them out of employment opportunities. The SMEs and early stage startups demand that some threshold limit be fixed for applying the 6-month maternity benefit. They have thrown a figure of Rs 10 crore.