After protests, SBI withdraws circular delaying joining of pregnant women

 After protests, SBI withdraws circular delaying joining of pregnant women

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TIMES NEWS NETWORK

30.01.2022

Mumbai: State Bank of India has said that it has decided to keep its revised instructions, regarding joining letters forpregnant women candidates, in abeyance. This follows protests from politicians, women’s rights bodies and a general outcry in social media over the bank’s circular restricting granting of joining letters to women candidates who are over three months’ pregnant. 

 Swati Maliwal,chairperson, Delhi Commission for Women, taking suo moto cognizance of reports on the new guidelines, issued a notice to the chairman of State Bank of India against  its December 31 circular, which said that women who were over three months’ pregnant would be considered temporarily unfit and would not be given immediate joining before delivery. 

On Saturday, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote to Nirmala Sitharaman and the SBI chairman, urging them to recall the revised guidelines. She pointed out that the extant guidelines that were brought forward in 2009 allowed the appointment of candidates up to six months of pregnancy but have now been revised. She highlighted the broader issue of the drop in female participation in the workforce. “Such regressive and sexist guidelines will exacerbate the exclusion of women and inequality faced by them,” she 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,” the bank said. It added that in some sections of the media, the revision in 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,” the bank said.