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In today's management milieu, Indian companies are keen to jump on the 'Corporate Social Responsibility' and 'Employee-friendliness' bandwagon, but most corporations do not plan resourcefully for their own staff to be away on maternity leave. Motherhood is a natural phenomenon and there is no need for women to make excuses for enjoying it. Being a mother or a potential mother cannot remove a woman from the job market or make her feel like an aberration in a professional atmosphere.
There can also be innovative provisions where maternity leave is clubbed with 'work at home' schemes or extended sabbaticals. Having a child-care unit in companies for working mothers is also a viable possibility.

Corporations across the world are incrementally enforcing mandatory parental leave, compulsory vacations, leave to care for old parents, and are framing smartly managed job rotation schemes to de-stress employees, hence resulting in work of higher quality. This has allowed couples to effectively share and discharge their social responsibilities and balance work and home on a partnership basis.

As more and more women are populating the workspace, corporate culture has to change and allow women to work alongside men without feeling like alien invaders from Venus. Women must take it upon themselves to initiate these changes and must stick it out in the workplace without renouncing their careers in the face of adversity.

Concluded.

* Contributed by: -
Remya Mohan,
Alumnus of SCMHRD, Pune,
Currently preparing for the Civil Services Examination,
Published work in PIONEER and THE INDIAN EXPRESS.