Special Provisions to Safeguard the Women Worker’s Interest in India

Social Justice is an essential ingredient required for ensuring the protection of women’s interest & gender equality. It is a pre-requisite for maintaining sustainable and encouraging sustainable economic growth. Social Justice refers to the attainment of laid down socio-economic objectives by the legislature. Since a very long time, the women workers have been discriminated in the matters of employment, wages, etc. and the fulfilment of gender equality principle was not even realised at the hands of the judges. In order to improve the condition of the women, significant roles must be assigned to them. Being a scientifically proven fact that women are biologically different from the men, equality here signifies equal role while understanding this fact but the differentiation in terms of salary or wages is a matter of discrimination. This issue was administered by enacting various pro women workers legislations such as The Factories Act, 1948 with the amendment act of 1987, The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 along with its amendment act of 2017, and The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, etc. Along with these legislations, the State has been directed by the Constitution of India to create special provisions in this regard. The SC has also tried to secure gender equality by interpreting the various articles of the Indian Constitution and thus prohibiting the use of any discriminatory policies with regard to women employment. With the help of the provided introduction above, the researcher by way of this paper has tried to highlight the various provisions related to labour laws in the context of women workers and how is it working towards ensuring and preserving the socio-economic justice in the society and maintaining gender equality and raising their standards of living.