Ensuring Gender-Specific Facilities at Workplaces in India

Walk into any modern office in Bengaluru or any garment factory in Tirupur, and the difference between workplaces that work for women and those that don’t often comes down to basics: a clean toilet, a safe ride home, a place to feed a baby, a system to report harassment. India’s labour laws have steadily built a framework for these gender-specific facilities, yet implementation lags far behind the letter of the law. Understanding what employers are legally required to provide, and why these provisions exist, is essential for anyone studying how women navigate the modern workplace.

Why gender-specific facilities matter 🔗

Women’s labour force participation in India has long been one of the lowest in the world, though recent data suggests a turnaround. The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24 shows that the Labour Force Participation Rate for women aged 15 and above rose to 41.7%, up from 23.3% in 2017-18. Yet the same data reveals deep gaps: female participation in urban areas still hovers around 26%, and women aged 25 and above with advanced degrees make up just 2.9% of the employed female workforce.

Why are educated women dropping out? A significant 43.04% of women cite childcare and homemaking responsibilities as the main reason for staying outside the workforce. Gender-specific facilities at workplaces, from crèches to safe transport, are not luxuries; they are the structural supports that decide whether a woman can actually take and keep a job.

Legal mandates for basic facilities 🔗

Several labour laws lay down what employers must provide. These overlap in places, but together they form the backbone of women’s workplace rights.

The Factories Act, 1948 🔗

This is the oldest of the lot and still the most detailed for industrial work. Section 19 requires separate and adequate latrine and urinal accommodations for men and women, kept clean and accessible at all times. Section 48 of the Act originally mandated a crèche in every factory employing more than 30 women workers, for the use of children under six.

The Act also imposes specific protections. Women cannot be required to lift weights beyond prescribed limits, cannot operate certain hazardous machinery while in motion, and historically could not work between 7 PM and 6 AM under Section 66(1)(b) of the Factories Act. That blanket ban on night shifts has since been challenged in court and relaxed by several states, a shift we will return to.

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 🔗

This amendment was a landmark. It raised paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for the first two children, recognised adopting and commissioning mothers (who use a surrogate) for a 12-week benefit, and introduced an enabling “work from home” provision. Most importantly for our topic, it inserted Section 11A, which makes a crèche facility mandatory for every establishment employing 50 or more employees, either separately or along with common facilities within a prescribed distance.

The provision is gender-neutral by design. The law uses the word “employees”, not “women employees”, which means even a workplace with mostly male staff is covered, on the principle that fathers too are caregivers. Women employees are entitled to four visits to the crèche per working day, including their rest intervals. Crèche facilities must be provided free of cost.

Breastfeeding breaks and nursing rooms 🔗

Although Indian law does not yet have a single comprehensive statute on workplace breastfeeding, the Maternity Benefit Act provides that until a child is 15 months old, a nursing mother is entitled to two breaks (in addition to her regular rest interval) for nursing. When read with the crèche provision, this means a working mother in a covered establishment has a legal right to step away, feed her child, and return to work.

The Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 🔗

Construction sites employ a large share of unorganised female workers. This law requires employers to provide crèches at sites where 50 or more women are working, along with toilets, washing facilities, and drinking water. It is one of the few laws that explicitly recognises the conditions women face in informal, site-based work.

Policies and schemes for childcare 🔗

Laws set the floor; schemes try to build above it. The most important childcare scheme in India today is the Palna Scheme, which replaced the earlier Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme for Children of Working Mothers.

From the National Crèche Scheme to Palna 🔗

In 2022, the National Crèche Scheme was reorganised and renamed as Palna under the Samarthya sub-scheme of Mission Shakti, the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s umbrella programme. Palna is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme funded in a 60:40 ratio between the Centre and States (90:10 for North-East and special category states), and it provides day-care for children aged 6 months to 6 years.

Palna has two delivery models. Standalone Crèches are dedicated facilities, often near workplaces or residential clusters. Anganwadi-cum-Crèches (AWCCs) merge new crèche services with the existing Anganwadi infrastructure, adding a Crèche Worker and Helper alongside the Anganwadi Worker and Helper. The government planned 17,000 AWCCs under the 15th Finance Cycle, and as of March 2025, around 11,395 AWCCs had been approved with 1,761 operational across 34 States and UTs.

Crèches under Palna are required to run for 7.5 hours a day across 26 days a month, with timings flexible enough to match the working hours of mothers in the area. The maximum recommended size is 25 children per crèche, ideally located within walking distance of homes or workplaces.

National Minimum Guidelines for crèches 🔗

Because the Maternity Benefit Act did not spell out crèche standards, the Ministry of Women and Child Development released the National Minimum Guidelines for Setting Up and Running Crèches under the Maternity Benefit Act, 2017. These guidelines cover location, infrastructure, equipment, health and nutrition, safety protocols, qualifications for crèche staff, and parent engagement. Some norms are non-negotiable; others can be adapted to local needs. State governments such as Karnataka and Haryana have notified their own crèche rules, sometimes adding stricter conditions like a 500-metre distance limit from the workplace.

Work conditions and safety 🔗

Physical infrastructure is one half of gender-friendly workplaces. The other half is how shifts, transport, and security are arranged.

Night shifts and the right to choose 🔗

For decades, Indian factories were barred from employing women at night. The reasoning was protective, but the effect was often exclusionary: women were locked out of higher-paying shifts and entire industries. Courts began to push back, and the Andhra Pradesh High Court held Section 66(1)(b) of the Factories Act unconstitutional, observing that the blanket ban had no reasonable nexus with the objective of protecting women.

States including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha have since issued notifications allowing women to work night shifts subject to safety conditions. Common requirements include:

• Written consent from each woman worker before night-shift deployment.
• Pickup and drop transport from home to the factory and back, provided by the employer.
• Well-lit workplaces and passages, especially routes to toilets, washrooms, drinking water, and entry/exit points.
• Toilets, washrooms, changing rooms, and drinking facilities near the workplace.
• Mandatory compliance with the POSH Act and a functioning Internal Committee.
• No conflict with the woman’s rights under the Maternity Benefit Act.

The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 will, when fully implemented, formalise these conditions at a national level, with Section 43 stating that women are entitled to be employed in all establishments for all types of work, with their consent and subject to safety conditions.

Protection from sexual harassment: the POSH Act 🔗

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, popularly called the POSH Act, is the cornerstone of workplace safety for women. It grew out of the Supreme Court’s Vishaka guidelines laid down in the 1997 case of Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, which served as the law on the subject until Parliament finally enacted a statute.

Key obligations under the POSH Act include:

• Internal Committee (IC): Every workplace with 10 or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee, with a presiding officer who is a senior woman, members from within the workplace, and at least one member from an NGO or association familiar with women’s issues. A majority of members must be women.
• Local Committee (LC): For workplaces with fewer than 10 employees or for complaints against the employer, the District Officer constitutes a Local Committee.
• Time-bound inquiry: Complaints must be filed within three months of the incident, and the inquiry completed within 90 days.
• Confidentiality: The identities of parties and witnesses are protected, and information relating to such inquiries is exempt from the Right to Information Act.
• Penalties: Employers who fail to comply can be fined up to ₹50,000, with repeat violations attracting higher penalties and even cancellation of licence.

Despite a clear legal framework, compliance is patchy. The Supreme Court has itself noted serious lapses, observing that only 16 out of 30 national sports federations had constituted Internal Committees as mandated, reflecting weak enforcement across public and private bodies.

Addressing gender bias and cultural norms 🔗

Facilities and laws cannot work in a vacuum. The deeper barrier to women’s economic participation is cultural: the assumption that domestic work, caregiving, and emotional labour are a woman’s primary job, with paid work fitting around them.

The Economic Survey 2024 estimated that women’s unpaid care work contributes 3.1% to GDP, an enormous invisible subsidy that rarely shows up as income or asset ownership. Surveys also reveal that around 31% of women identify commuting as a barrier to work, often forcing them into costlier or restricted travel options sometimes described as the “pink tax”. Limited mobility, unsafe housing near workplaces, and rigid work arrangements that clash with caregiving compound the problem.

Steps toward genuine inclusion 🔗

Real progress requires more than statutory minimums. Policy and workplace practice are beginning to combine several approaches:

• Universal, affordable childcare through expanded Anganwadi-cum-Crèches and tax incentives for employers who run quality crèches.
• Flexible work arrangements, including work-from-home and part-time options, which the Maternity Benefit Act now explicitly permits after the 26-week leave.
• Working Women Hostels and Hubs: The Labour Ministry has recommended setting up Working Women Hubs to reduce commute time and offer integrated childcare support.
• Safe transport: Gender-sensitive urban transport, well-lit streets, and reliable last-mile connectivity.
• Sensitisation and POSH training: Regular orientation for all employees, not just IC members, to shift workplace culture.
• Shared parental responsibility: Paternity leave and the gender-neutral framing of crèche provisions push back on the idea that caregiving is solely a mother’s job.

The Code on Social Security, 2020 has consolidated maternity benefits, crèche facilities, and several other provisions into a single framework, with the expectation that simpler compliance will improve coverage, particularly for contractual, temporary, and gig workers who are often left out.

The compliance gap 🔗

Laws on paper rarely match conditions on the ground. Reports continue to surface of women in textile and garment factories working long hours without clean toilets, of warehouses lacking restrooms, of small offices that have never constituted an Internal Committee. The International Labour Organization has noted that very few Indian employers were compliant with the POSH Act despite its legal mandate. Bridging this gap will need stronger inspections, transparent reporting, financial support for small employers to set up facilities, and worker awareness so women themselves can demand what the law already promises them.

What do you think? Should the cost of crèches and maternity benefits be borne entirely by employers, or shared with the government and insurance systems, as it is in most other countries? And how can workplaces in the vast informal sector, where most Indian women actually work, be brought under the protective umbrella of these laws?

References

1. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2057970
2. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2074399
3. https://blog.ipleaders.in/employment-women-factories-factories-act-1948/
4. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4f969c10-9bde-432a-97e7-327eb3a358eb
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_Benefit_(Amendment)_Act,_2017
6. https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/indian-maternity-benefit-amendment-act-2017.html
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2119769
8. https://www.epfindia.gov.in/site_docs/PDFs/Circulars/Y2022-2023/CRECHE_CIRCULAR_24022023.pdf
9. https://www.livelaw.in/law-firms/law-firm-articles-/the-factories-act-1948-andhra-pradesh-high-court-maternity-benefit-act-osh-code-singhania-partners-214639
10. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/protection-of-women-from-sexual-harassment-act-2013
11. https://yourstory.com/herstory/2026/01/economic-survey-2025-26-rise-womens-workforce-participation
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Harassment_of_Women_at_Workplace_(Prevention,_Prohibition_and_Redressal)_Act,_2013