Current affairs

'Pregnant women are unfit': After national outrage, SBI takes back its contentious guidelines!

By alagu, 29 January, 2022
SBI, Controversies

The State Bank of India (SBI), which is the country's largest bank, had spurred outrage across the country over its new guidelines that focus on the medical fitness of the employees in which it has said that a woman candidate who is more than three months pregnant will be considered 'temporarily unfit'. The bank has drawn huge flak from several leaders including the MPs and the banking employees' association after which the controversial guideline has been withdrawn. 

According to reports, the bank has released a new set of medical fitness guidelines and said that a woman candidate can be considered fit in case of pregnancy which is less than three months. "However, if pregnancy is of more than 3 months, she will be considered temporarily unfit and she may be allowed to join within four months after delivery of the child." 

Earlier, women candidates who were up to six months pregnant were allowed to join the bank, subject to certain conditions. Some of them include disclosing a certificate from a gynaecologist as a declaration that the work would not get affected due to the health of the woman or foetus. After the guidelines were made public, the women rights activists and MPs had slammed such flawed measures and staunchly attacked the bank for pioneering a wrong precedent.

CPI Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam has written to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in which she had demanded immediate withdrawal of the medical fitness circular issued by SBI pertaining to the guidelines for the recruitment of pregnant women and the parliamentarian had underlined that such fitness guideline undermines women's rights. The Delhi Commission for Women has also issued a notice to SBI in which it has appealed to the bank to take back its new rules. 

Swati Maliwal, the Chief of the Commission, has castigated the notion and wrote on Twitter, "State Bank of India seems to have issued guidelines preventing women who are over 3 months pregnant from joining service & have termed them as temporarily unfit. This is both discriminatory and illegal. We have issued a notice to them seeking withdrawal of this anti-women rule." 

The All India State Bank of India Employees' Association has written to the SBI leadership unit demanding the revocation of the guidelines. The association has said, "The proposed amendment by the bank is fundamentally prejudicial and against womanhood. The proposed amendment will be unconstitutional as it discriminates against women, by treating pregnancy as a disease. It cannot be forced upon a woman to have a choice between bearing a child and employment as it interferes both with her reproductive rights and her right to employment and such an action cannot have any place in the present modern era." 

In his letter to the SBI Chairman, Madurai Lok Sabha MP Venkatesan has said that the guidelines are discriminatory based on gender and breaches the principle of the Constitution, which guarantees equality. He stated the passage of such guidelines is a reflection of the patriarchal mindset of SBI management. Venkatesan has also written to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and urged her intervention towards withdrawing the anti-women guidelines. 

As the sequel to the overwhelming opposition, the SBI has taken back the contentious guidelines. In a statement, it has said, "SBI has recently reviewed the various Fitness Standards for Recruitment in the Bank, including norms for Pregnant Women candidates. The revised guidelines were intended to provide clarity on various health parameters where instructions were not clear or were very old. In some sections of the media, the revision is norms in this regard has been interpreted as discriminatory against women." 

"SBI has always been proactive towards the care and empowerment of its women employees who now constitute around 25% of our workforce. During the Covid period, as per Government instructions, pregnant women employees were exempted from attending office and allowed to Work from Home. However, in view of the public sentiments, SBI has decided to keep the revised instructions regarding recruitment of pregnant women candidates in abeyance and continue with the existing instructions in the matter", the bank has added. 

 

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