The key findings from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) of selected states have reminded us that India is facing a crisis of poor nutrition outcomes.
Prevalence of stunting among children has remained stagnant or increased in most of these states. The appalling under-nourishment of children reflects poor maternal nutrition, widespread anaemia and insufficient breastfeeding. Anaemia among women also remains very high and has, in fact, increased in several states.
Clearly, there is an urgent need to boost maternal well-being through comprehensive maternity protection, including health services, supplementary nutrition and wage compensation for the period during late pregnancy, childbirth and exclusive breastfeeding. The existing arrangements for maternity entitlements are inadequate as the Maternity Benefit Act (2017) addresses only those women who work in establishments with 10 or more workers.
The Periodic Labour Force Surveys (2019) show that labour force participation rates among women aged 15 and above is only 25% and among them only 12% work in such establishments. For all other women, the only maternity entitlement available is through the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, a cash transfer scheme of only ₹5,000, grossly under-budgeted, and barely addressing 25% of pregnant women.
Women in agriculture, scheme workers such as anganwadi workers and ASHAs, street vendors and domestic workers are not even included in the Act. There was a possibility for addressing these lacunae in the Code on Social Security (2020) for which rules are being drafted. Unfortunately, this Code has missed the opportunity for creating a framework for universal maternity entitlements.
The Code and the draft rules are exclusionary in the provisions for maternity benefits, which are a cut-and-paste from the Maternity Benefit Act, 2017, where only women who are in formal employment are eligible. The Code specifies that to be entitled for a maternity benefit, a woman should have worked in an establishment for a period of at least 80 days in the 12 months preceding her expected date of delivery, which makes it further difficult to avail the benefit given the precarity of work.
The Code is further discriminatory towards women with more than two children and deprives the third or later child of the care and breastfeeding from their mother as she would get only 12 weeks leave instead of the recommended period of six months (World Health Organization). The maternity benefits are also limited to only three months in the case of adoptive and surrogate mothers. In fact, maternity benefits should be gender neutral as “parental benefit”, since sometimes men may need to care for the child, or the adoptive parent may not be a woman/mother.
Even for women who are eligible, the onerous documentation requirements as laid out in the draft rules include a certificate from a medical officer and a notice to the employer, as well as making submission of Aadhaar details mandatory for unorganised sector workers, and digital application is the norm. This puts an unnecessary burden on the pregnant woman. It would be simpler to rely on the registration of pregnancy with the health department or the Integrated Child Development Services, by just adding a column in the Mother and Child Protection Card, which can be the document used to make her automatically eligible for the payment of a maternity benefit.
While the amended Maternity Benefit Act as well as the Code specify that establishments that have 50 employees shall have a creche facility, the draft rules dilute this provision by stating that “in every establishment where fifty or more women employees are ordinarily employed”. This not only reduces the availability of these facilities of children, but it is likely to make employers reluctant about employing more women. In reality, what was required was expanding the creche provision to all children with a locality-based arrangement that permit the mother to go and breastfeed close to the workplace.
Given the fragile nature of social protection for these working women, all provision of maternity protection should be universally applicable to all working women regardless of the consistency or duration of work and independent of their current status of employment. If we recognise that maternity protection is essential to ensure that women have enough to eat, can rest and breastfeed the baby, and to improving the nutrition indicators, India must make it a universal entitlement.
The coverage of the maternity should neither be establishment-specific nor should it depend on the number of children. In fact, we would be penalising women for no fault of theirs, since during the pandemic and lockdown, lakhs of women went through unwanted pregnancy with no access to contraception or abortion services. Maternity benefits should be a right of all workers regardless of their employment status, or the number of children.
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[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.