Women and Work

What are the laws that are relevant to working women in Sri Lanka?

The Laws that apply to working women in Sri Lanka are:

Women’s safety and health in the workplace –

Factories Ordinance of 1950 and subsequent Amendments -

women’s rights during the period of maternity

Maternity Benefits Ordinance of 1941
Shop and Office Employees Act of 1954,

Law protecting the rights of women in the workplace

Employment of Women,
Young Persons and Children Act of 1956 and subsequent amendments.

The equality of men and women is enshrined in the Constitution of Sri Lanka and as a member state of the ILO Sri Lanka is obliged to create the environment for decent work, which in turn leads to productivity and security of service for men and women alike. The ILO’s Decent Work Agenda states that Productive Employment and Decent Work are key elements to achieving a fair globalization and the reduction of poverty.

What are the safety measures ensured by law for night work by women?

Section 2A of the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act states that:

Primarily and most importantly a woman cannot be compelled to work at night against her will.
The employer must obtain prior approval of the Commissioner of labour for the employment of women after 10 p.m.
The law also provides that no woman who has worked a shift of during the hours 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. can be employed after 10 p.m. on any day.
The wages for a woman who does night work must be one and a half times the normal payment received by her.
Women wardens must be appointed to oversee the welfare of women workers who work at night.
All night shift women workers must be provided restrooms and refreshments by the employer.
No more than 10 night work shifts that can be allocated to a woman worker during a period of one month.
The provisions mentioned above do not apply to women holding managerial or technical positions, women employed in health and welfare services (which are not manual in nature) and women of the same family engaged a family business.

According to the Section 67 Factories Ordinance

the number of hours worked not including the intervals for meals and rest and the period of employment cannot exceed nine hours in any day or forty eight hours in a week.

While all of the Occupational Health and Safety provisions contained in the Factories Ordinance apply for both men and women, Section 25 specifically states that:

a woman or young person shall not clean any part of a prime mover or of any transmission machinery while the prime mover or transmission machinery is in motion.
They also should not clean any part of any machine if it exposes them to risk of injury from any moving part either of that machine or of any adjacent machinery.

Under Section 86 of the Factories Ordinance provides

protection for women and young persons employed in certain processes connected with lead manufacture and in processes involving the use of lead compounds.
The provisions include notifying the Chief Factory Inspecting Engineer of cases of lead poisoning as a result of manufacturing processes.

The Shop and Office Employees Act, (Section 10) states that

person below the age of 14 years cannot be employed in any shop or office, and any person between the ages of 14 and 18 years cannot be employed in any shop or office before 6 a.m. or after 6 p.m.
However, any woman above 18 years may be employed in a hotel or restaurant between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Any woman over 18 years of age may be employed in a residential hotel before 6 a.m. or after 6 p.m. on any day.
Any woman over 18 years of age may be employed in a shop or office for the period or any part of the period between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.
This rule is relaxed for a male who is above 16 years of age, enabling him to be employed in the business of a hotel, restaurant or place of entertainment for the period or any part of the period between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Section16 of the Act provides for

the provision of seats in shops in every room behind the counters, where women are serving customers the proportion of the number of seats available must be not less than one seat for every three women working in the room.
Any employer in either public or private industrial undertakings which employ women workers and young persons is required by law to maintain a register of their names, dates of birth as well as their hours of work and must make it available for inspection at any time.

The employer is also required under the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act to display the legal provisions in Sinhala, Tamil and English, pertaining to the protection of the rights of women and young persons, in the public spaces on the premises.

Under the Mines and Minerals Law and Mines (Prohibition of Females on Underground Work in Mines expressly prohibits:

the employment of women, irrespective of age, being employed in underground mines at any time.
The exception lies with the employment of women in managerial and supervisory positions.

What are the provisions for Maternity benefits for private and public sector women workers?

The Maternity Benefits Ordinance applies to private sector workers and also for workers on the estates, while the Shop and Office Employees Act addresses Maternity benefits under Section 18 (A to H) in relation to white color employees in the private sector.

Under the Maternity Benefits Ordinance, lactating mothers are allowed a period of 2 hours of paid leave per day as nursing intervals during the first six months to nurse their new born children.

See the article on Maternity benefits on this website for more details.

Are employers expected to provide day-care and crèche facilities for women workers with children?

Under Section 3 of the Maternity Benefits Ordinance in instances where the employer has made alternative arrangements for providing women workers employed on his estate with maternity benefits, the Commissioner of Labour may issue a certificate to the employer exempting him from the mandatory provision of 84 working days paid leave for the woman worker as a maternity benefit, in respect of the first two live births.

Those alternative maternity benefits are available to every woman worker resident on the employer’s estate and to those not resident on the estate, but who have given prior notice of confinement in the prescribed manner and seeking the alternative benefits.

Any woman worker who chooses not to avail of the alternative maternity benefits, will not be entitled to receive the maternity benefit of 84 days of paid leave.

If the Commissioner is unsatisfied that the employer is providing the alternative benefits as claimed, the Commissioner may cancel the certificate of exemption.

The alternative benefits would include: a maternity ward or lying-in-room for the use of the woman worker, the services of a midwife at the time of confinement, a period of not less than 10 days in the maternity ward or lying - in - room and the provision of free food during this period. The woman worker should be paid such benefits at the rate of 4/7th of the benefits due.

In the event the women worker delivers twins on the first confinement, she will be entitled to 42 days as maternity leave on the basis that she already has two living children. It is important to note that it is the number of children at the time of the confinement that is considered and not the number of previous confinements. Estates also provide crèches for the new born children of their workers.

In the cases of employers who have a staff cadre comprising mostly women, such as some garment factories et al, some of them provide day-care facilities for the young children of the workers. However though previously efforts had been made to make this facility available under the law, it has still not been legislated upon, even though the working population of women in Sri Lanka is 2.5 million out of a labour force of 7.7 million.

As such since the provision of day-care facilities for children of workers is not a requirement under law, it is provided on an ad-hoc basis and is considered a staff welfare facility or an act of corporate social responsibility.

About women

A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Strong, Woman, Tell

I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

Marilyn Monroe

Him, High, Heels

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Age, Best, Woman

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

John Lennon

Great, Woman, Idiot

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Higher, Lows, Ah

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

William Shakespeare

Men, May, Sky

Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.

Bill Cosby

Voice, Hear, Deeper

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.

Oprah Winfrey

Failure, Another, Afraid

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.

Groucho Marx

Life, Him, Control

No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree.

W. C. Fields

Crazy, Doubt, Question

A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future.

Coco Chanel

Future, Perfume, Wear

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

George Bernard Shaw

Men, Vote, Attractive

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Anna Quindlen

Morning, Smart, Woman

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

Coco Chanel

Men, Mother, Strong

Women, can't live with them, can't live without them.

Desiderius Erasmus

If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.

George Bernard Shaw

Men, Married, Characters

I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.

Little Richard

God, Men, Mother

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

Robert Frost

Men, Lonely, Boss

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Erica Jong

Smart, Woman, Guy

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.

Barbara de Angelis

Real, Give, Away

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

Bill Cosby

Men, Between, Belong

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

Mae West

Men, After, Wrong

I like intelligent women. When you go out, it shouldn't be a staring contest.

Frank Sinatra

Contest, Staring

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.

Coco Chanel

Men, Truth, Strong

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Timothy Leary

Men, Ambition, Equal

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