Awareness about women inequality and the glass ceiling has undoubtedly increased with time. Apart from increasing literacy and digitization, strong women leaders who worked their way to success have inspired women to shatter the subconscious biases towards women.
However, with increasing awareness, data shows there are biases against hiring women due to maternity costs. Biases against women workers due to natural process of pregnancy or menstruation is not surprising in India.
According to a March 2020 LocalCircle survey, the new maternity law which mandates six months of paid maternity leave has affected the hiring trends of almost 49 per cent start-ups or SMEs in India in the last 12 months.
The survey, based on 8,500 votes from start-ups, SMEs and entrepreneurs, revealed that 33 per cent of the respondents did not hire women at all while 16 per cent hired fewer women than in the previous year.
Apart from this, 6 per cent businesses said there should not be any maternity leave allowance.
The bias against women workers in India is not surprising. A previous 2019 study by the Centre for Monitoring India Economy (CMIE) showed women graduates are more than 3.5 times likely to be unemployed than their male counterparts. The study showed that while overall unemployment in India is 7 per cent, unemployment rate among women is 18 per cent.
