The National Commission for Women organized the final Law Review Consultation on the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 and the 2017 Amendment to review and analyse the legislation affecting women and recommend amendments to meet any lacunae, inadequacies and shortcomings.
In pursuance of the Commission’s mandate to review legal and constitutional safeguards pertaining to women, NCW has conducted one preliminary consultation and five Regional Level Consultations to relook the Act in order to formulate specific recommendations for amendments and enhancing the outreach of the legislation.
Through this Consultation, the Commission endeavoured to seek views, suggestions and opinions of experts and stakeholders from all over India.
The Commission invited legal experts, advocates, academicians and legal experts from different fields to deliberate upon the real challenges and technical issues faced by women.
Some of the important suggestions made by the panelists were to extend the paternity leaves so that the burden of raising the child is shared equally between both the parents, incentivizing employers, and sensitization of the corporate sector for employing more women workers.
The experts also discussed the issue of women working in the unorganized sector, provision of crèche facility on a case to case basis rather than number of employees, scope of incentives for employers, etc.
