The Budget proposes to reduce the provident fund (PF) contribution of women employees to 8 per cent from the standard 12 per cent, with no change in the employer’s contribution. Will this four percentage point differential see more women flocking to companies for jobs? Unlikely; and here is why.
First, the incentive is too negligible to galvanise women to start circulating their CVs. It is worth remembering that there was a time when tax-paying women employees enjoyed a higher standard deduction than their male counterparts (one of the nineties’ Budgets ended that sop). This certainly gratified many of us at the
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