Growth of Maternal Employment in India

Owing to the rapid urbanisation today, most women in India have learnt to strike the right balance between work and children. While they want to spend quality time with their children, they also want to maintain meaningful careers. The situation has become more favorable for them as most companies today are seen to be increasingly keen on hiring mothers, both on full-time as well part-time basis.

According to a report published by the Regus Business Tracker, it is Indian business corporations and not the international ones that are more intent on hiring mothers on part-time basis, with 64% stating that they have plans to hire more during the coming two years. Of all the countries studied, this factor makes India the country with biggest potential for mothers for employment. Meanwhile, even as India fared exceptionally well in the global scenario, the nation still faces a challenge in creating a work-place that is suitable and flexible for mothers. Although the country has registered a metamorphic change in the attitudes of society and companies towards working mothers particularly in the urban areas, rural areas still lag behind in this phenomenon. In these rural areas, even today, the woman has to put up with the lingering notion that their first and only priority is taking care of their children, making participation in work force a betrayal of conventional gender roles. On the global scale, it was found that the size of a company held no relevance in its intentions to hire more mothers in 2010 and 2011.

Promoting maternal employment in the country, the Indian government had also recently allocated Rs. 100 crore in the year 1009-10, for the opening of more crèches in workplaces for children of working mothers. 10% of the allocated budget is set for the north-eat Indian region. As a result of the need for supplementing household income and increasing employment opportunities, most women today require day care services for the well-being of their children. One of the most notable organisations providing this facility is the Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme which provides crèches for the children of working mothers in Ministry of Women and Child Development. Furthermore, it is also directed at providing day care services particularly in the poorer section of the country, for toddlers in the age group 0-6 years. It benefits the mothers greatly as those with a monthly household income of less than Rs. 12,000 are privileged to send their children to this crèche at minimal rates.