Maternity Leave is an important benefit to the female employees that plays important role to increase organizational loyalty, efficiency and job satisfaction, particularly in the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). ‘Maternity Benefit’ means leave with wages granted to a female worker because of her giving birth to a child. Maternity is a condition which requires differential treatment to achieve genuine equality and, in this sense, it is more of a premise of the principle of equality than a dispensation. In Bangladesh, every employee will be entitled maternity leave for four to six month during two times at their service spell. But, some employees are discharged, dismissed, withdrawn or retrenched during their pregnant or leaving period.
In Omar Faroque’s research paper from Department of Business Administration at Northern University Bangladesh, published in Beijing Law Review 2013 vol. 4 No. 4 by Scientific Research Publishing. This study interviewed one hundred female employees experiencing at least one child at the different NGOs in Bangladesh and found that all of them have got three or four months as maternity leave benefit and a significant number has not got any types of payment during maternity leave (27%), have not enjoyed maternity leave properly (24%), and termination, send away, discharge etc. due to maternity leave (19%). It is also found that an inverse relationship exist with duration of maternity leave and age (26.4%) and length of service (34.1%). It revealed that duration of maternity leave decreases with increasing employees’ age and length of services and evidently, no NGO practices laws of maternity benefit properly in Bangladesh.
Therefore, every NGO should administer and implement the Laws of maternity benefit properly.