Women face a motherhood penalty. Women often have to drop out of the workforce after childbirth and never be able to return. The result of this is the current reality of a much lower number of women in top leadership across the world. The numbers are more stark in the developing world, where gender norms hold more strongly and thus prevent women from returning to work. While there is a need to find a sustainable long-term solution to transforming gender roles and supporting women in raising children, there are certain revisions developing countries can make in their maternity protection laws and practices to protect women’s health and employment security during pregnancy and after child birth.
Financing the maternity benefits scheme in a way that does not hurt women’s health and employment interests is crucial. International Labor Organization recommends that the burden on financing such a scheme must not lie on the employers as it may give rise to discrimination against hiring women. India’s current maternity protection law covers women comprehensively but relies on employers to pay for women’s benefits. This could serve as a negative incentive for employers to hire women, as women employees are more ‘expensive’ for them. While there is no concrete evidence to link this provision to India’s declining women labor force participation, it is important to note that this law has not helped increase women’s employment. India’s women who work in the formal sector could greatly benefit if India reformed its law’s financing method to a contributory insurance system where both male and female employees make contributions to the maternity benefits scheme. This could help decrease the motherhood penalty that women face.
Women at the workplace are often not aware about the provision of maternity benefits laws that are meant to protect them. Thus, it is hard to monitor whether the employer is abiding by the laws. For example, while Rwanda has a mature maternity protection regime (a contributory insurance system enacted in 2016) that was brought in place after multiple consultations with employers and employees, it does not have effective monitoring mechanisms to ensure that employers pay the cash benefits to women on maternity leave. To solve for this, taking advantage of the pension and hospital databases could be useful.
In the long run, paternity protection is the most important policy solution to making sure women are protected. While this is not talked about enough today, conversations should start even in the developing world. Unless men and women both share responsibility for childcare, women will not have equal opportunities to work.