Equalising the playing field

Tax benefits for maternity benefit payouts could realistically incentivise companies to hire more women

Two developments this month have brought into stark focus the practical issues embedded in the vexed issue of increasing gender diversity in the workplace.

Earlier this month, a state labour department team visited Apple iPhone assembler Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu plant after the Union government reportedly drew attention to discriminatory hiring practices there. The provocation was a Reuters investigation that alleged that, over 2023 and 2024, Foxconn declined to hire married women for its main iPhone plant. Expectedly, the company denied such practices; its HR executives told labour department officials that 8 per cent of the company’s employees