Last week our lawmakers were roused into action and enthusiastically passed a bill that increases maternity leave for working women from 12 to 26 weeks. There were congratulations all round as India joined a small group of countries that offer generous leaves to new mothers. Countries like United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway have similar policies and enjoy a high participation rate of women in the labour force. India is now a step closer to emulating these progressive countries, or so the thinking goes.
And yet, well intentioned as this law is, it could set back the cause of gender parity in the Indian workplace. As a diversity consultant and a working woman, my view may seem counter-intuitive. After all, a law that ensures that young mothers have enough time after childbirth and are not rushed to get back to work, can only encourage more working women?

It isn’t that simple.

First let’s talk business. With the exception of large companies, very few businesses can afford to pay half a year’s salary, while hiring a temporary replacement. Business decisions are based on top and bottom-line considerations, and the prospect of hiring an employee who could be on paid leave for 26 weeks, may deter many employers from hiring women. Larger employers, who can absorb this cost, have already implemented such policies. Facebook, Google, Flipkart all provide more than 20 weeks of paid parental leave along with childcare subsidies and flexible working hours. It’s the smaller companies, which are already reeling under the regulatory burden, who will be most impacted.

Even if companies overlook this cost, does a longer maternity break help in retaining women employees? The data isn’t that conclusive. The average age for Indian women to have their first child is 20 years. Educated urban women have children a few years later, but it’s still in the mid twenties. But most analyses show that the gender gap is a pyramid—there are fewer and fewer women as one goes up the corporate hierarchy.

The gender pay gap, which measures the difference in salary between a male and a female employee for the same job, increases with seniority. This points to a more systemic problem in the under-representation of women employees than just women who don’t return after childbirth.
It’s not just numbers. The bill conveniently ignores one half of the child-bearing equation—Indian men. When Bandaru Dattatreya, the labour minister, was asked about this omission, he chivalrously declared, “The bill is about mothers and children. It is not about the men.”

But what the good minister misses is that caring for a child is as much about men as it is about women. By ignoring the role of fathers and by placing the burden of childcare solely on the mother, the bill serves to reinforce stereotypes that working women have long fought to overcome.

Scandinavian countries have successfully used parental policies to guide gender ratios because they also include men. Sweden’s year-long parental leave can be shared between the two parents. Long-term data shows 25% of all men have taken a paternity break, which has contributed to women currently comprising of 35% of mid- and high-level positions in Sweden.

Typically female labour force participation increases with a country’s economic growth; this effect is greater in developing economies. But in India it’s the opposite. Between 2004 and 2011, the Indian economy grew by 7%, yet during the same time 7% more women dropped out of the workforce. Rohini Pande, an economist at Harvard argues that this atypical decline of working women in the labour force, despite higher economic growth, is driven by our traditional gender norms. Our society values the purity of women and we equate being at home to being safe from harm.

This law only reinforces that view.

Finally, government mandates are rarely effective in changing attitudes. For instance, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) requires publicly-listed companies to have at least one woman director on its board. But a recent study found that over half of the women directors have strong links to the promoters, most of whom have no previous business qualifications.

Let businesses lead the way

A progressive policy is most likely to succeed if it has full support of the institutions that benefit from it. If companies see the business imperative in having a more gender diverse workforce they will champion the cause.

The travel site, AirBnB, was forced to implement stringent anti-discrimination rules when some of its hosts discriminated on the basis of race. The resulting negative publicity was a catalyst to implement long-demanded changes to stamp out this behaviour. Similarly, LGBT rights in the US were long coming but when technology companies like Apple, Netflix and Amazon announced their inclusive policies, the discussion became mainstream.

A few industries in India are already leading the way. The airline industry has quietly embraced progressive work policies. The result: 11% of pilots are women when compared with the global average of just 3%. The tech boom in India has also created a demand for smart programmers, regardless of gender. India now leads in the employing a greater share of female developers than most other countries.

But there’s a lot more that can be done. For instance, one of the biggest barriers to hiring and promoting women employees is the implicit bias of employers, who are male. This isn’t just an Indian phenomenon. In the 1970s, women constituted only 5% of the top 5 US orchestras.

A simple act of moving to an interview process where the musician was asked to play for the jury behind a black curtain (the blind interview) made that number rise to about 30%. Blind interviews are now a common practice to remove unconscious bias during recruitment. De-biasing every stage of the employee journey would do more to add women than any additional weeks of maternity.

These steps aren’t driven by any law or government directive. They simply make good business sense—in hiring better, in promoting better, in reaching customers more effectively.

The government must be commended for finally accepting that the skewed gender ratio in the workplace is an impediment to India’s economic and social progress. But their approach suggests an old-fashioned view of work and family. Indian women have moved ahead, it’s time the government caught-up.

The author is a diversity and inclusion specialist who works with companies to build an open and collaborative culture