Bhubaneswar, Oct. 25: More women in the city are joining the workforce, carving out a space for themselves, but life is not all hunky-dory, especially for working mothers.
With very few crèches or child welfare facilities available here, working mothers are torn between taking care of their children and their jobs.
The rescue of the four-year-old child, who was locked in the house by her mother when she went out to work, on October 12 has kick-started a debate about the availability of childcare facilities for working mothers. In this case, the mother, who used to work in a hospital, had no option but to leave the daughter locked in the house in the absence of a baby-sitter. Sociologists and women's rights activists feel the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), which handed over the rescued child to her grandparents, handled the case poorly and did not try to understand the situation from the mother's perspective.
"It was not right to leave the child alone when the mother went to work. But members of the CWC have been branding her as a bad mother and this is unfair. The media has been hounding her with allegations as if she is a criminal. She works in the health sector, which is a demanding profession. Why is childcare always the sole responsibility of the mother? Why doesn't the CWC come up with a crèche instead of taking someone's kid away?" said sociologist Nabanita Rath.
There are only three to four crèches in the city that offer childcare for working mothers. All of these are private centres and the state government is yet to come up with such a facility. While most people cannot afford private day care centres, those who can afford find the services not up to the mark.
"I drop my daughter at a childcare centre in the city, which is far from my work place. The timings are a problem since they close by 6pm and I have to either rush to pick her up or arrange for her to be picked up and dropped at home. Also, here crèches usually do not have facilities of parents monitoring the child's activities throughout the day through CCTV footage. Even if they do, the facility is very expensive," said Sweety Panigrahi, a banking professional.
Working mothers face a lot of challenges and the root lies in the societal structure as well as the change in family systems, said Lokapriya Kanungo, another sociologist.
"In our society, women need to struggle a lot to create their own space. When it comes to taking care of children, it is always considered the mother's responsibility and no one demands answers from the father or other family members. The shift from joint to nuclear families is another reason for working mothers running out of options. Parents of either the mother or father of a child could have been a great solution," said Kanungo.
Women's rights activist Namrata Chaddha said that most working couples in Bhubaneswar have their roots in villages. "Either their parents do not want to leave the village and come to the city or there is a huge gap in the lifestyle of the two generations," she said.
The condition is worse for single mothers. "Among the poor families, many fathers do not provide maintenance to the wife and children," said the activist.
Chaddha said the state government should intervene and start crèches if it wanted to provide a support system to working women. "There is a lot of focus on infrastructure development and smart city but the state government is least bothered about providing child care centres for working mothers ."
The less number of leaves for new mothers in the private sector is also a hurdle in enabling women to work and handle their child without worrying about losing their job, said Rath. She added that there were rules for offices to have a crèche if there are over 10 women in a workplace, but these are openly flouted.
Despite several attempts to contact them, officials of the state women and child development department were not available for comment.
