India’s ambition to become a $5 trillion economy requires both a skilled and fully tapped workforce. However, a huge part of the country’s talent pipeline is still leaking at a very stage: When women become mothers.
A significant number of women leave their jobs before they turn 30, often when they are moving up to mid-level positions. This happens in a lot of different fields. One of the main reasons women leave is that there isn’t enough reliable, easy-to-find childcare. For a lot of working parents, especially mothers, the lack of institutional support often turns what should be a smooth transition into a new job into an unavoidable break in their careers.
The effects go well beyond just one household. Women constitute roughly one quarter of India’s workforce, and this figure has remained stubbornly low despite rising higher education attainment amongst them. This happens when their role transitions into being a mother, but the workplace fails to adapt.
This loss of workers has clear effects beyond their individual careers. The McKinsey Global Institute says that improving gender equality in India could add up to $3 trillion to the country’s GDP over time. When women leave the workforce during their most productive years, the economy loses not only immediate output but also long-term gains in leadership diversity, innovation capacity and tax contributions.
The cost is also clear at the level of the organisation. Human resource studies estimate that replacing a mid-level employee can cost companies the equivalent of six to nine months of that employee’s salary, once recruitment, training and productivity losses are accounted for. When new mothers leave their jobs in large numbers, businesses face a recurring cycle of attrition that weakens their continuity and increases operational costs.
In this context, childcare support is increasingly seen not as a welfare benefit but as a tool for the economy.
Corporate daycare centres, whether on-site or close to the office, have become one of the most useful solutions. These facilities make it much easier for employees to go back to work after maternity leave and stay engaged in their jobs by reducing their commute burdens and simplifying childcare logistics for working parents. Companies that have structured childcare programmes often say that they keep more women on staff and have fewer absences.
India’s regulatory body have recognized this need. The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act says that businesses with 50 or more employees must provide access to crèche facilities within a certain distance from the workplace. But implementation is still uneven across sectors, and many companies still see childcare as a way to meet legal requirements instead of as a smart investment in their workforce.
Some businesses are now thinking about the problem in a new way. Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services are two big IT and service companies that have set up structured childcare ecosystems as part of their larger plans to promote diversity and inclusion. These programs show that including childcare help in company policy can make it easier for mothers to balance work and life and keep them on the job.
At the same time, specialised providers have stepped up to build the infrastructure for childcare by using partnership models that allow businesses to offer professional daycare services without having to build their own facilities. Some new daycare providers are working with businesses to build centres on-site and near-site that make it easier for working parents to find childcare, especially in the early years when many women leave the job.
The Banyan, one such initiative, works with companies in many fields, including aviation, hospitality, power utilities, and the public sector, to set up childcare centres at work that help kids from birth to early childhood. These kinds of models help working parents deal with unpredictable hours and help companies keep skilled women workers and keep their talent pipelines diverse in fields where people work shifts and have busy schedules.
These kinds of projects are slowly changing childcare from a problem that families have to deal with on their own to a part of the workplace infrastructure by working with both private companies and government agencies.
This is how ideas turn into action.
It’s not just fair to let mothers work anymore. For a country to keep its economy growing, it has to invest in childcare facilities and policies that not only make it easier for women to find work but also protect its talent pipelines and strengthen the economy.
This article is authored by Swati Jain, director, The Banyan.
