Equalising the playing field

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

- KANIKA DATTA

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 are married women, though it did not give a break-up specifically for the iPhone facility (the company also makes Pixel smartphones for Google). It added that 25 per cent of women hired in the latest intake were married women.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court declined to issue a directive making it mandatory for governments to offer its women employees menstrual leave. Though, irritatingly, the Bench deciding an issue concerning women's health was headed by a man, the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, the court validly pointed to the counter-productive consequences of this policy, including dissuading companies from hiring women.

Both issues point to the practical problems associated with hiring women that corporate managements regularly face but are rarely openly discussed in the discourse on women in the workplace.