Maternity
Benefits for Working Women
Breastfeeding
Promotion Network of India (BPNI) organized
an interactive session with journalists
on "Maternity Benefits for Working
Women" in organized and unorganized
sector
supported by World Alliance for Breastfeeding
Action (W ABA) on 25th May 2001at Indian
Women ' s Press Corps, Delhi.
The
main objective of this meeting was to
enlist support of journalists especially
women journalist,
and to discuss how to involve media on
the subject as well as to find out how
media
could help in the provision of maternity
benefits to unorganized sector and increase
the benefits in the organized sector .
Mrs.
Reva Nayyar, the Secretary of National
Women's Commission was the Chairperson
of
this meeting. Other experts on the panel
include, Dr. Jyotsna Chatterji, Director,
Joint Women's
Programme, Dr. Vandana Prasad, National.
Coordinator, FORCES, Dr. Patrice Engle,
Chief-CDN Unit, UNICEF, and Nirmala Selvam,
Coordinator-Women and Work, BPNI,
and Dr. Arun Gupta, National Coordinator
of BPNI. Twenty participants were there
including the electronic media as well
as print media.
On
behalf of BPNI and W ABA, Dr. Gupta welcomed
all the participants and he informed the
group about the new outcomes on ILO recommendation
(June 2000) highlighting that this has
included the unorganized sectors to be
included under definition of the working
women. Another important matter pointed
by him was the recent World Health Assembly
a resolution, 54.2, 18 May 2001, which
calls for exclusive breastfeeding for
first 6 months. He urged the group that
we should make an effort to spread this
message to all through media.
He
also introduced the various activities
of the BPNI and especially the Task Force
of Women
and Work, which was spearheading the movement
of ensuring that women working
outside the house are provided with maternity
benefits. He emphasized that the exclusive
breastfeeding was a human right of the
child and was a major reason for which
maternity
benefits should be provided in addition
to maternal reasons for the benefits.
He
also informed the members that BPNI/FORCES/ILO/UNICEF
is working on this issue
and would like others to join to this
effort. He also highlighted the purpose
of this meeting.
Mrs.
Reva Nayyar, Secretary, National Commission
for Women, said in her inaugural address
that she is very happy to note that BPNI
as an No0 is involved in this issue of
maternity
benefits for working women. She felt that
this was a basic right of the mother and
the society should find the ways and means
of provision of such benefits. She highly
commended
BPNI for its role and commitment and promised
all support, encourage me and
collaboration in such an effort.
She
explained that the National Commission
for Women is an autonomous body consisting
of members and there is provision to look
after and provide the legal safeguard
to
women. If there are any violations of
the maternity benefit Act, people could
report to this
Commission, they would take action and
will assist the cases. She fully agreed
with the
need for provision of maternity benefits
and felt that there is need for awareness
to be provided
to the mothers to fight for their rights.
She assured of all possible support to
BPNI
on this subject.
She
also emphasized the role of the media
in providing awareness, information, advocacy
on
these issues so that the working women
can benefit and hoped they would take
positive
steps.
Nirmala
Selvam, BPNI Coordinator for Women &
Work Task Force, presented the Reasons
for Maternity benefits and the problems
faced. She emphasized that maternity benefit
is not only to maternity leave and it
includes others like, nursing breaks,
facility for
nursing infants, support for pregnant
and lactating women regarding duty hours
and type
of work, job protection and payment etc.
She explained about the maternity protection
Act and the objective of this Act is to
protect the dignity of motherhood for
the full
and healthy maintenance of the woman and
her child when she is not working. The
present
Act is only for the women in the organized
sector or places where there are more
than
20 employees. There is no provision of
any maternity benefits in any other sector
as yet.
She
also discussed the current situation of
the provision of maternity benefits and
the problems
which women in the working sector are
facing. She also highlighted some public
sector companies providing maternity benefits.
The
presentation ended with a request to journalist
as how they could help in this subject.
The
request was to highlight organisations
that have good practices to help women
get the
benefits, give coverage on accurate information
on breastfeeding and how to help to find
solutions where such benefits do not exists.
Dr.
Vandana Prasad of FORCES emphasized more
on unorganized sectors. She said there
is
no law to help the atypical workers, even
in the organized sector the law is not
been implemented
and the women employees have been exploited
and not provided with the benefits
by various methods. She has explained
about the law and the ILO convention on
Maternity
Benefits and also felt that implementation
of the same has not been effective and
monitoring is very poor. She explained
the work of Mobile Creches. She strongly
felt that
mass movement for awareness of the rights
of mother should be strengthened and efforts
made to see how the working women could
benefit. She also presented the current
situation
on the issue.
Dr.
Jyotsna Chatterji, Director, Joint Women's
Programme explained the law and she said
the legal shape should be given to the
proposed statutory scheme for maternity
entitlements
through discussion. We need to press for
allocation of funds for Maternity entitlements
in the budget every year and felt that
a social security or a maternity benefit
fund
be created for the reasons need and the
provision of these benefits.
After
the presentation, there was lively brainstorming
discussion between the journalists and
the panel members. Various ways and means
were discussed and the methods, approaches
which the media should adopt to ensure
that lively public debate on this issue
is
created which will help in forming a strategy
which BPNI and other NGOs should adopt
to ensure that the provisions of maternity
benefits becomes a reality.
At
the meeting it was also felt that there
is need for involvement of the media,
journalists, both
in print and electronic to be involved
in the movement. Some of the journalists
present
volunteered to be apart of this actively.
Some of the journalists present shared
their
work and case studies of colleagues about
what do they face while working.
It
was also felt that there is an urgent
need to provide all the newer documents
and update information
to the journalist on these issues to be
able to undertake the task of reporting
and
continuing with the campaign.
Recommendations
of the meeting:
