Second, the cost of living in big cities is increasing tremendously. The overdrive on the privatization of essential public services has increased the cost of living in big cities. The cost of childcare in big cities is very high, and on the other hand, the quality of affordable childcare in big cities is deficient. This has created a vicious cycle wherein the young couple with meager savings and used to having a particular lifestyle is unable to engage in family planning. They end up delaying the maternity or end up planning for one child for the risk of losing a steady income. Like in Germany, the government must have tax provisions, subsidized childcare provisions for working couples to encourage them to have planned pregnancies.

Working women take a career break for maternity leave. They typically end up losing one full year. If the women are planning to have two children, then most likely they may end up losing two years. Most organizations in India are not willing to extend leave to working women. Besides, the working mothers are always under stress about the health of their young ones until she/he turns 5 years. Unlike men, they are always on alert and on minutes notice to leave their work and rush to the school or creche to take care of their sick child. Most organizations are not willing to accept this necessity of human life. The lack of empathy within an organizational workspace for working mothers (especially those who have toddlers) makes it difficult working women to manage both career and motherhood, which affects the bottomline of the organisation.

Family planning and maternity negatively effect women careers in the long run. Their juniors become their seniors during the period of motherhood and the management is unable to grapple with the change in status of their employees. To effectively ensure level playing field for the women, the management must have empathy towards the women, their role in organization and their position in the society and country. Empathy should be incorporated into how human resources design the career of any women staff. The organizations must involve flexible working time for women, the meetings should be arranged with women as focus (not just client as focus). The technologies which ensure remote working should be used to provide flexibility to women workforce. The variable pay structure taking into account the position of women (with or without the need for childcare) must be taken into account and discussed with the women employees.

The effect on women’s careers within an organization as a result of maternity and childcare should be documented and turned into a “flexible” policy document. The point of view of management ( the inherent corporate bias) should be addressed through proper training sessions, empirically proven corporate policy directions, and counseling. In the end, women have an equal role in making the country and society competitive and an empathetic organization does its part.