Symbolic Convergence, Substantive Divergence: A Comparative Study of Maternity Protections in Bangladesh, and India

Maternity protections occupy a central position in labour-law systems because they shape women’s access to paid work, allocate the costs of reproduction, and determine whether nations can meaningfully reduce gendered employment penalties in SME-dominated economies, while heavily impacting decent work discourses which disproportionately impact women. This article examines how Bangladesh’s 2025 amendment to the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 compares with India’s post-2017 maternity-benefit framework, including the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017 and the Code on Social Security 2020. Using a comparative doctrinal method and benchmarking both systems against the standards set by ILO Convention 183, Recommendation 191, and Convention 156, the article analyses divergences in eligibility thresholds, benefit duration, financing models, childcare obligations, health protections, and the legal treatment of adoption, miscarriage, and non-standard forms of motherhood. The study finds that although both jurisdictions increasingly adopt equality-affirming statutory language, their core design choices continue to diverge from ILO-preferred incentive structures. India offers longer leave and more inclusive definitional coverage, alongside stronger post-maternity supports on paper, yet its continued reliance on employer-liability financing risks a persistent hiring chill and uneven de facto uptake. Bangladesh’s 2025 reforms expand leave duration and refine wage computation but retain high access barriers and coverage-narrowing architecture. In both systems, the gap between rhetorical alignment and effective protection is driven less by headline duration than by financing, eligibility thresholds, childcare infrastructure, and inspection-ready enforcement.