“Beginning in the 1800s with the Industrial Revolution, when women started to go into the formal workforce, leaving working at home to working in factories, countries realized they needed to do something. And they started to pass paid maternity leave” - Jody Heymann. Maternity Benefit is one of the essential concepts in case of a working woman. Motherhood is an important and a challenging job which could be done only by women. In the modern world many women have started to go for work and it is essential to provide them with maternity leave so that they could take care of their children and also their health. The Maternity Benefit Act was passed in 1961 to provide various benefits to women that includes paid maternity leave and maternity leave up to 12 weeks. In March 2017 Central Government had amended the Maternity Benefit Act thereby making some changes to the original Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. In this Article the author would like to state the object behind providing maternity benefit and then going through The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 and then describing about the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 with its advantages and disadvantages.
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