Working women: South Asia
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
Maternity leave
The Times of India, January 27, 2016
The government has proposed to amend the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, and increase the statutory maternity leave period from the current 12 weeks to 26 weeks. India's 12 weeks, or 84 days, of paid maternity leave are among the lowest in large economies with significant presence of women in the workforce. Any more than 26 weeks will impact women's employability, cautions the Union labour ministry.
2016
2016: Workplace gender gaps persist: WEF
The Hindu, October 25, 2016
The World Economic Forum (WEF) reckons that the gender gap in India has narrowed down since 2015 — with the gap closing in primary and secondary education enrolments — pushing it up in the Forum’s global gender gap rankings from 108 in 2015 to 87 in 2016.
However, India remains one of the worst countries in the world for women in terms of labour force participation, income levels as well as health and survival, according to the Forum which has been compiling the Global Gender Gap report since 2006 by examining four broad dimensions of gender equality — economic participation, education, health and politics.
India has closed its gender gap by 2 per cent in a year, but much work remains to be done to empower women in the economic sphere, the WEF report noted. “Overall, India ranks 136 in this pillar out of 144 countries, coming in at 135th for labour force participation and 137 for estimated earned income.”
The global workplace gender gap, measured in terms of economic participation and opportunities, is getting worse and stands at the highest level since 2008, according to the WEF. This gap will ‘now not close until the year 2186,’ going by current trends.
'Bangladesh tops in South Asia
Within South Asia, India’s neighbour Bangladesh is the top performer (ranked 72nd), recording progress on the political empowerment gender gap, but a wider gap on women’s labour force participation and estimated earned income. India’s women rank highly on political empowerment (9th in the world) and the country is closing the gap on wage equality and across all indicators of the educational attainment sub-index, “fully closing its primary and secondary education enrolment gender gaps.”
