A list of rights — on Mother’s Day

My mother is one of the most hardworking women in my life, I can claim this with certainty having witnessed her journey of growth extremely closely. She is a successful educator and a confident woman with remarkable ideals to live one’s life by. But in her roles as a mother, wife, and a ‘homemaker’ — I have seen her be a little different, performing duties without question, much to my amusement.

Having thought about this dichotomy of her personality and witnessed very similar patterns in successful strong women around me — I have realized how their homes have not been conducive to bringing out their true selves and I vehemently blame — the institution of marriage, the gender stereotypes and the mountain of expectation of a woman responsible for the household. Home as space and family as a social order has reinforced the gender roles that burden women disproportionately. I have put together some concepts and rights below that can help our wonderful mothers/mothers-to-be to claim their rights within the society that most of the time shackles them, without them even realizing:

Image Source: Pew Research Centre

• Unpaid Care work: Unpaid care work refers to all unpaid services provided within a household for its members, including care of persons, housework, and voluntary community work (Elson, 2000). These activities are considered work because theoretically, one could pay a third person to perform them. McKinsey estimates that women do 75% of the world’s total unpaid care work. In India, women spend 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services while men spend 97 minutes, according to the 2019 NSS report on time use.
• Maternity Leave: Under the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961, a woman employee is entitled to maternity leave up to 26 weeks of paid leave — out of which eight weeks can be taken prior to the delivery date and the remaining period of leave after delivery. If the woman employee suffers an illness or miscarriage, then she can get one month of additional paid leave. The law protects these new mothers from dismissal during the period of maternity leave. Once the child is born and the woman employee has returned to work, she is also allowed to take two nursing breaks in a day.
• Creche: A crèche facility was already mandatory in any factory having more than 30 women employees but with the amendment to MB Act in 2017, a requirement to set up a crèche became mandatory in companies having more than 50 employees. So far, only Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, and Karnataka have incorporated rules providing clarity on the finer details of setting up this crèche facility. To fill this void, in 2018 the Ministry of Child and Women Development formulated the ‘National Minimum Guidelines for Setting-up and Running Creche under the Maternity Benefit Act 2017’ (found here). These guidelines provide certain norms and standards which could be used as a reference point to ascertain a well-maintained crèche facility set up by the company or even on a stand-alone basis by any organization in the business of child-care.
• Surrogacy: A woman is not obligated to carry a child in her womb. Many women today are opting for reproduction through the surrogacy method due to various reasons. The woman carrying the baby is called a ‘surrogate mother’ and the woman opting for this method is called a ‘commissioning mother’. Surrogacy in India is legal and regulated under the ‘National Guidelines for Accreditation, Supervision and Regulation of ART Clinics in India, 2005’ (found here) framed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The Surrogacy Bill, 2019 is currently pending in the parliament, and once enacted it will regulate ‘altruistic’ surrogacy. So far there is no law restricting commercial surrogacy, but once the Bill becomes law, commercial surrogacy will become prohibited in India.
• Surnames: Changing or not changing the name or surname of a woman after her marriage has no effect on her marital status, a magistrate’s court said in a recent order while deciding on an application for maintenance by a woman married to a police constable.“It is not the rule of law or mandatory that a woman should have changed her name or surname after her marriage or remarriage and use the surname of her present husband with her own name.”
• Financial Information Disclosure: As a married woman, one has the legal right to food, clothing, shelter, basic amenities, and medical treatment for herself and her children. So, she should not have to ask for any of these things as her husband is required by law to provide these. As a wife, one also has the right to know the details of her husband’s salary, according to a 2018 ruling by the Madhya Pradesh High Court. One can explain to her husband the need to share financial information in case of any eventuality, be it death or disability.