Indian firms keen to hire working moms: Survey

The survey attributes the trend to the culture maintaining a balance between work and family responsibilities.

“Sixty-four per cent business leaders in India are keen to recruit more mothers into their workplace on a part-time basis over the next 24-months,” a global survey carried out by world’s largest provider of innovative work-space solutions, Regus, said.

As against this, the survey found nearly half (44 per cent) of the global business population plans to hire more mothers returning to part-time work over the next two-years.

The finding indicates that the Indian work culture is, overall, keen to support the balance between work and family responsibilities, the survey said.

According to the survey, conducted over 11,000 corporates across 13 countries, the trend marks India as the country with the most ambitious hiring intentions out of those studied.

“The most conservative hiring estimates appeared in the Netherlands, with only 24 per cent expecting an increase,” it said. While India’s performance registered positively on the global scale, the nation still faces numerous challenges in making the workplace suitably flexible for new mothers, the survey said.

“Although attitudes towards working mothers have changed over the past few decades in the large urban centres of India, rural businesses sometimes demonstrate reluctance to treat working mothers fairly.

In such areas, women can struggle with the lingering notion that they are meant to take care of children, and re-entry to the workforce may be seen as a betrayal of traditional gender roles,” the survey said.

Another challenge facing working mothers in India is the level of resentment from male co-workers that has developed as a result of new legislation that extended maternity leave periods, it said.