WOMEN WORKERS: BREAKING THE SHACKLES OF TIME LIMITS

Sri Lanka, a nation where women account for 52% of the population, grapples with a troubling disparity in their representation within the workforce. Despite advancements in education and a growing number of female university graduates, women’s participation in the labour market remains dishearteningly low, hovering between 30-37% for more than a decade.

This glaring gender imbalance calls for immediate action to address the structural barriers that hinder women’s employment prospects. In particular, the outdated and restrictive labour laws surrounding working times for women need to be overhauled to foster inclusivity and empower women in the workplace.

The number of women in office work, particularly in leadership roles, is even more significantly low, despite the increase in female university graduates over the past few years, reports show.

To increase the proportion of women in employment, we need laws that focus on enabling participation rather than restricting it.

Sri Lanka’s current labour laws concerning working times for women are counterproductive in this sense. These antiquated laws, although stemming from the intention to protect women, have consequences that discourage female employment, from both an employer’s and potential employee’s standpoint.

Online discussions by the Colombo-based thinktank Advocata Institute highlighted the role of working hour restrictions in limiting women’s opportunities to work.

“We have been looking into the constraints that prevent women from entering and being retained in the labour force. A significant factor which we found to be responsible for these constraints was our gender-biased labour law,” Advocata Research Assistant Thathsarani Siriwardena told the Daily Mirror.

The Shop and Office Employees Act, Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act and Factories Ordinance place restrictions on a woman’s right to engage in night work.

In most industries, women over the age of 18 can only work until 8 p.m. In certain jobs such as in the hotel and tourism industry, the cutoff working time for women is 10 p.m.

These constraints on working times not only limit the number of hours for which a woman can earn but also deter employers from recruiting female candidates as, after a particular time, a male counterpart is required to take over.

This often acts as reasoning for employers to prefer male candidates over women applying for the same job role. For instance, in the hotel and tourism sector, one of Sri Lanka’s leading industries, only 10% of the workforce is made up of women.

There are exceptions to this rule, such as submitting a Night Work Approval Application to the Labour Department. However, a key argument by proponents for the removal of working hour restrictions for women is that there should be no need for additional approval to be granted for a woman to continue working for hours that men are already able to work during.

These gender-specific protocols are yet another process which many employers are unwilling to undertake.

In August 2022, a proposal to amend the Shop and Office Act to allow women in the IT Sector to work the night shift was approved by the Cabinet, which signals progress in this segment.

It is now a matter of extending this across industries and addressing it in the legal framework. There are currently no legal provisions which address part-time and flexible working hours. During the pandemic, we saw the applicability of unconventional working systems like the work-from-home model and part-time work, with an increased call for more flexibility when working. For women in particular, legislating part-time work would promote employment since many women are involved in unpaid care work that may make a traditional working day impractical. studies show that women with children under the age of five are the most vulnerable to leaving the workforce, and the availability of part-time or flexible working hours has the potential to change this trend.

In practice, many women work overtime as operations of certain organisations run late. Accordingly, the inclusion of provisions within the labour law which enable women to work overtime would not only enhance women’s opportunities to earn but also promote the regulation of overtime work in a legal capacity. According to Advocata Institute, guidelines to prevent the exploitation of involuntary or excessive overtime work should also be integrated into the labour law. Much of the existing labour laws addressing women in the workforce seem to stem from the intention to protect women.

This mindset in itself can be harmful as it carries the misconstrued notion that women are not as capable to engage in work as men. Reforms to the existing labour laws would play an important role in changing this mindset.