Maternity benefit act entails creche facility- but who cares!

Ever since the Maternity benefit act underwent revision in India in the year 2017, many positive changes have been seen across the industries that employ women. The change has been a welcoming step where India as a country decided to extend their support to working mothers. But still a long way to go.

The act talks about giving creche facilities to employees who belong to organizations with 50 or more employees on a mandatory basis. Its been more than 3 years since the act is in place. The extension from a 13 week paid maternity leave to 26 weeks paid leave is definitely in place without a question in most companies but the crèche? No! Hush hush! You are not supposed to know about it, and you should not even enquire and embarass your respective organizations about this facility that exists in the act till your baby is a year old.

Women already feel guilty having taken this leave, and now a creche facility where the mother should be allowed to visit the baby 4 times in a day?? I mean, what is left after that in terms of coming to office and get some productive work done? No, we cannot afford to even discuss this and waste our time.

Ok, you might be feeling that I am bashing the companies for not getting this facility in place. But not really, why should this burden of extended thirteen weeks of paid leave be just the responsibility of the company that employed the mother? Why is creche facility an onus for the companies alone?

We can just not have an act implemented by the government and simply throw it on private organizations and other bodies that house female employees. By doing this, are we not making them averse to hiring female employees? Are we not making them reluctant to welcome back the primary caregivers after the maternity leave to the organization with the zest and zeal with which they hired them once upon a time?

I strongly feel that, both the government and the organizations of the father must also share the financial expenses of supporting the mother with all the facilities she is entitled to as per the act. The responsibility of raising the future citizens of the country and the harsh damage to the careers of women should not be borne by the mothers all the time.

During the process of hiring, an organization should have it in the mind that the individual sitting across the table will choose to become a parent someday and we need to factor in the cost. And this should be irrespective of the gender of the individual, so that the brunt is not borne by a female candidates alone.

Not every woman is as lucky as I have been, who will get to enjoy a period of extended lockdown right after their maternity leave. I was fortunate to be with my child and work from home till he was a year old owing to the pandemic posed countrywide lockdown. But this will not be the situation with women who will become mothers in future.

Barely six months into maternity, and they will be required to join back the office. They need to juggle with their work responsibilities and duties as a mother. Every morning they have to wake up and leave behind their wailing babies in the arms of someone else and battle with the guilt of being unjust and unreasonable and career oriented mothers.

The first one year in the life of an infant is crucial and if the act is in place, then we need to extend the required support to the mothers during this time. They have been given the onus to raise responsible and smart next gen for the country. And they cannot do that if they are suffering a burn out. Most mothers leave their work or are forced to leave due to lack of proper infrastructure for balancing career and personal life.

We need to be more inclusive, we are leaving behind a huge chunk of talented work-force who could have contributed greatly to the economic development of the country. They are being forced to choose between work and personal life, and that should never be the two options for them to select.

Even when they choose to come back after a brief period of break, they are not given the due respect that they command, which makes it all the more discouraging to come back. Its time, we stand beside the mothers, see them jump into senior roles and be part of boards and management in greater numbers and not merely a minute 8% representation as we see now.

Companies should seriously brainstorm about this. And the Government cannot just make an act and decide to lull on it. They need to put a proper plan in place to see it gets implemented without hurting companies much.

USA has declared 2020 as the year of the mother, they will do what it takes to make a mother feel good. How about us?