In early October, Kiran*, a 36-year-old HR manager in Islamabad, walked into a trap. After beating around the bush about her ‘behaviour’ and not meeting deadlines, her manager blindsided her by saying, “In light all of these things, I feel like maybe we don‘t need this position anymore. I’ve decided to dissolve the position.” She was set to go on maternity leave the following month.

“He looked at me and said ‘you can still pay your medical bills. I will fight for those’,” as she was entitled to paid maternity leave along with reimbursement of her hospital bills. Having worked at the company for almost a year, with a promotion and increment in June 2025, Kiran wasn‘t sure what prompted the sudden dissolution of her position. Her work and demeanour in the office were criticised during the meeting, but she said she hadn’t been asked to review her performance since June, nor had she faced any criticism from her manager.

However, it was common at her workplace to dismiss women or put their performance under review after maternity leave, hers being the first instance of a woman being fired before taking maternity leave.

The same month, Zainab Zahrah Awan won a landmark case against Embrace IT, a private tech company, which was fined Rs1 million for terminating her employment while she was on maternity leave. According to the Federal Ombudsperson for Protection Against Harassment (FOSPAH), a federal official to whom women can file confidential, fast-tracked complaints if they face harassment or gender-based discrimination at work, “dismissing a woman during maternity leave could fall under the category of gender discrimination”.

The Maternity and Paternity Leave Act, 2023 guarantees federal-sector women employees up to 180 days of paid leave for the first child, 120 days for the second, and 90 days for the third, while men receive 30 days on all three occasions. The law criminalises non-compliance, with penalties of up to six months’ imprisonment or fines of up to Rs100,000. Yet, as Federal Ombudsperson for Protection Against Harassment Fauzia Viqar observed, “While laws exist, awareness and compliance remain weak, especially in the private sector. Many employers still view maternity leave as a concession rather than a right.”

Legal gaps and reality

The ombudsperson is “making this understanding part of workplace culture through both enforcement and education”. In 2024 her office conducted over 300 awareness sessions across the country to educate both employers and employees.

But the gap between law and lived reality is vast. Kiran did not file a complaint. “To be honest, I‘m scared of being branded as being difficult. As somebody who people are afraid to hire because she will make a scene later.”

Most of the people interviewed for this article did not know where to take their complaints. “The legal system of Pakistan is very daunting and tedious,” said one father. He’s right — the legal battle is indeed technical.

“First, one would need to check their province and then determine the jurisdiction. This can only be guided by a lawyer,” explained Fatima Butt, a high court lawyer based in Islamabad.

Fauzia Yazdani, a senior gender adviser for the UNDP, calls it a governance failure. “Our institutional governance structures have grown weaker and weaker. We do not have a rule of law, and implementation of law has been on the decline.”

Across provinces, maternity protection remains patchy: Punjab still follows its 1981 Leave Rules allowing 90 days or just over 12 weeks. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 2013 Act grants 12 weeks, while Balochistan (14 weeks) and Sindh (12 weeks) have their own laws with varying enforcement. As Yazdani noted, “Women as a subject were devolved post-18th Amendment, so each province now has its own framework.”

For mothers like Kiran, the legal paperwork means little when your livelihood hinges on a manager’s mood. “Employers must understand that anticipating motherhood is not a valid reason to end employment,” Viqar said. “Doing so violates both the letter and the spirit of the law.”

When motherhood becomes a workplace taboo

In Pakistan, a job interview may come with a side of probing questions — “Are you planning a family?”, “How will you manage with a baby/child/toddler?” — that often decide career paths for women.

When Asmara*, an electrical engineer from Lahore, told her manager that she was pregnant, she didn’t expect the silent shift that followed. “My line manager slowly kept me out of the loop and presented my performance so badly that they suddenly promoted another person instead of me,” she said. “I felt so insulted that I had to resign.”

Asmara’s story isn’t rare. Journalist and labour expert Aoun Abbas Sahi explained that the private sector’s structural and cultural biases often work in tandem to push women out of the workforce. “There is no knowledge about maternity laws. The number of labour inspectors is minimal, and they have vast areas [to cover]. They don’t have enough resources to visit factories or talk to people,” he said.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No 81 on labour inspection, which Pakistan ratified in 1953, the role of labour inspectors is central to ensuring decent working conditions. Under the convention, inspectors are supposed to enforce labour laws and guide both employers and workers on the most effective ways to comply with those standards. Yet, according to Sahi, there aren’t enough inspectors or resources to oversee the public and private sectors of Pakistan.

According to the Centre for Labour Research, Pakistan has 517 labour inspectors for 10.63 million formal-sector workers, meaning one inspector for every 20,560 workers. The math isn’t promising — if the entire 65.5 million labour force is counted, each inspector is responsible for around 127,000 workers.

Ombudsperson Viqar agrees that women are often fired for pregnancy. “Discrimination does not always appear as a direct act; it can also manifest as subtle, systemic exclusion,” she said. “When women are penalised for pregnancy through increased workload, loss of opportunity, or hostile attitudes, these behaviours fall within the definition of harassment and gender-based discrimination.”

However, this discrimination often hides behind polite HR language, such as “team realignment,” “budget constraints,” or “performance review”.

The neglect often also extends to basic workplace amenities. “Separate washrooms, childcare rooms, even simple facilities like private nursing spaces rarely exist,“ Sahi explained. He said sometimes daycare centres amount to little more than “token rooms” with two plastic toys and no ventilation, just to show compliance to the authorities.

For Syra*, a senior NGO professional in Islamabad working on a women empowerment project, the bias was more emotional than explicit. Her complicated pregnancy meant she worked from home on the doctor’s orders. “They graciously allowed that, but there was an unsaid expectation to over-perform and prove that I was working,” she recalled. “Even though I was taking precautions and working long hours, I felt like I was under surveillance.”

Upon returning from six months of maternity leave, Syra found herself clashing with her manager over basic accommodations. “I asked if I could continue hybrid work since my child was breastfeeding,” she said. “Instead of empathy, I was told, ‘Tum pe itna ehsaan kiya hai. [We have done so much for you]. We gave you paid leave!’ The organisation offered a ‘nursery,’ a dusty room with a small carpet and one table. It was humiliating. I eventually resigned,” she said.

Yazdani called this a “regressive gender-normative penalty”. “When we do not see women as equal persons, we don’t see them as equally productive professionals,” she explained. “That’s why they’re excluded from promotions or given subtle penalties after pregnancy.”

Women across sectors, from NGOs to tech firms, describe the same cycle: pregnancy leads to suspicion, leave leads to resentment, and return leads to erasure. “Even if women get maternity leave, the moment they come back, they’re told their seat’s been moved, their team reassigned, or their performance reviewed,” said one HR executive at a tech corporation who requested anonymity.

Sahi, the journalist, believes it all stems from the absence of accountability: “No one is monitoring compliance, and no one is penalising non-compliance.”

Why working women matter

In a country where only 23 per cent of women participate in the labour force, the loss of each employed woman is not just a personal setback; it’s a national one. “Employers must see maternity [leave] not as a liability but as a shared societal responsibility,” said Viqar. “Supporting mothers through flexible policies, inclusive leadership, and respect for family life is not only a legal duty, it’s good for business, [employee] retention, and workplace morale.”

Globally, the numbers are unambiguous: the World Bank estimates that increasing women’s participation in the workforce could raise GDP by over 20pc in developing economies. Yet in Pakistan, despite higher female enrolment in universities, women continue to vanish from the job market once they marry or have children.

This gendered exit is visible across sectors, from engineering to education, journalism to development. As Asmara, who was forced to resign from her engineering firm, puts it: “They post about women’s equality every March, but when you get pregnant, you become replaceable.”

Her words echo the Khushhali Microfinance Bank case decided by FOSPAH in 2024, where senior executive Amina Hassan was forced to resign after a successful 20-year career. The ombudsperson’s final order noted that she was “denied a severance package that was granted to all male employees before and after her,” terming it “discrimination based on gender”. The decision reaffirmed that equal treatment at every stage, from recruitment to termination, is part of Pakistan’s constitutional guarantees of dignity and equality.

However, equality on paper has yet to become a reality in practice. “You can have the best laws in the world, but if HR departments are afraid of male management, they’re just letters on paper,” Asmara said. “Eighty to 90 per cent of engineering firms have HRs that can’t act independently.”

Yazdani explained that Pakistan’s governance structures have collapsed in terms of accountability. “Implementation of law has been on a decline. We have no monitoring, no compliance audits, no culture of enforcement,” she said. “Maternity leave is not a favour; it’s part of a woman’s reproductive health rights recognised under Article 14 of the Constitution as part of the right to life and dignity.”

For many organisations, especially those in the private sector, compliance is often viewed as optional. Yet, women’s contributions to Pakistan’s economy remain vital and undervalued. According to a 2021 UNDP report, if Pakistan matched men’s labour force participation rates, its GDP could increase by 60pc. “We cannot reach economic stability by excluding half our population,” said Viqar. “Women bring perspective, productivity, and persistence qualities the economy desperately needs.”

For fathers, too, the 2023 Act marks a shift: for the first time, men are entitled to 30 days of paternity leave on three occasions. But the cultural shame surrounding men taking that leave still lingers. A father who was interviewed for this article and works in finance said, “When my wife was expecting, I was told, ‘why do you need a month off? You’re not the one giving birth.’”

He took it anyway. “My manager didn’t speak to me for weeks. But I wanted to be there. It’s as much my responsibility.” While the law recognises that parenting is shared labour, society has yet to catch up.

The mental load

Behind every maternity leave denial or ‘voluntary’ resignation is an emotional toll that few workplaces acknowledge. The anxiety of losing income, identity, and professional standing during what should be a protected time leaves long-lasting scars.

For Syra, the NGO professional whose employer berated her for asking to work from home after her newborn was born, the aftermath was devastating. “I gave six years of my life to this organisation. When I resigned, they asked me to pay a full month’s salary for not serving the required notice period. I was emotionally exhausted. It wasn’t just about the job, it was about dignity,” she said.

The stress didn’t end with resignation. “I would wake up feeling anxious about being judged as unreliable. Even after months, I felt guilt for prioritising my child over work,” she admitted.

Internationally certified mental wellbeing coach and trainer Amna Shaukat Ansari described this as “a form of postpartum occupational trauma”. She explained that when maternity leave is treated as a professional inconvenience, women internalise the blame. “The concept of ‘bouncing back’ makes it traumatising for mothers to talk about the invisible struggles they face daily just so they can financially support their family,” she said.

According to a study published in the Nursing for Women’s Health journal, Pakistani women have one of the highest prevalence rates of postpartum depression (PPD) in Asia, with rates ranging from 28pc to 63pc. Beyond women, PPD has a substantial negative influence on infants and families — a number that spikes when financial insecurity or job loss accompanies childbirth. Cultural silence makes it worse: women hesitate to discuss workplace-induced anxiety, fearing they’ll be seen as “weak”.

Even women with supportive employers face mental strain. Aisha Ali, a journalist at The Centrum Media, described her return to work as an identity crisis. “I wasn’t the same person I left the office as. It took me a while to acclimate. My reality had changed. I was juggling a baby and a newsroom that never slept,” she said.

Gender norms also deny men the emotional vocabulary to share parental stress. While the Maternity and Paternity Leave Act, 2023 includes 30 days of paternity leave, most men hesitate to avail it. “When I took time off after my wife’s delivery, my colleagues laughed,” shared one father. “They said, ‘You’re acting like a housewife.’”

But even in this uneven landscape, some men are quietly challenging the status quo. One father interviewed said, “My child was in the NICU for 10 days, and I had no clue how to manage work. Every day, I would go from the office to the hospital, and my manager would tell me, ‘you’ve already taken casual leave.’ Those 10 days were the hardest of my life.“ Another, a third-party contract worker, recalled being threatened with termination for taking time off during his wife‘s delivery: ”My supervisor said, ’If you don’t show up tomorrow, don‘t come back.’“

Psychotherapist Shifa Lodhi believes these stories reveal how gendered policies harm families, not just women. “Fathers experience pressure to perform at work when the family needs them most. When men aren’t given space to share care responsibilities, it reinforces toxic masculinity and isolates mothers further. Shared leave and empathy must be the norm, not the exception,” she said.

Mental well-being coach Ansari agreed, adding, “If companies can spend on retreats, they can also spend on organising intimate sessions with fathers to help during and after pregnancy. When men take paternity leave, it reduces stigma for women and promotes true workplace equality.”

“It’s not about special treatment,” said Syra, the NGO professional. “It’s about basic understanding that a woman recovering from childbirth can’t immediately handle 10-hour days or field visits.” The experts interviewed for this article say this systemic stress feeds into Pakistan’s larger mental health crisis. When women leave the workforce because of maternity discrimination, they lose more than income; they lose identity, confidence, and a sense of purpose. This loss reverberates across families and society, deepened by a cultural guilt that punishes women whether they choose to work or stay home.

Even in sectors where maternity leave is in place on paper, women describe workplaces where empathy is lacking. As Sahi noted, “The management is mostly men. They don’t want to understand because resources are involved. Instead of accountability, there’s avoidance.”

The impact is cumulative. Women absorb the tension, question their worth, and retreat from ambition. At this point, it’s not just a “women’s issue” — it’s a public health one.

What happens when employers get it right?

Fortunately, not every maternity story ends in frustration or resignation; empathy and success are not always at odds with each other.

Shaheera, a journalist from Karachi, remembers being terrified to tell her employer she was pregnant. “I had only been at the organisation for six months. I thought they’d think I was irresponsible for not waiting longer,” she said. But when she finally did, her manager congratulated her and told her to take all the time she needed. She later headed a project as well.

That sense of loyalty and motivation is echoed by Aisha Ali, a journalist who returned to work at The Centrum Media after maternity leave. “I was scared, but my editor made sure I was part of every meeting even while I was on leave. They checked in not about deadlines but about my health,” she said. “When I rejoined, I was never made to feel behind.”

This simple act of inclusion made Shaheera and Aisha “more productive and more loyal than ever”.

Ansari believes such practices are transformative. HR’s role goes beyond processing maternity leave forms; it’s also about creating an emotionally safe culture where women feel seen, valued, and respected throughout pregnancy and after returning to work. This can include setting up check-ins before and after maternity leave, offering flexible work options, and training team leaders in empathy and communication to prevent insensitive comments or exclusion from projects, she said.

A simple gesture, such as asking “how can we support you better?” can make a significant difference. “Maternity transitions should be treated as a normal life stage, not a professional disruption,” said the mental well-being coach.

International research supports this experience. The ILO and World Economic Forum both highlight that companies offering paid parental leave see higher employee retention and productivity. According to the ILO, when women are supported through maternity and return-to-work transitions, they are far more likely to remain in the workforce and stay with the same employer.

Solutions and global perspective

Pakistan‘s struggle to implement maternity protection laws is not just a legal and structural problem — it’s one that requires reform on several levels. Experts and officials agree that the path forward must combine legislative clarity, institutional accountability, and cultural change.

Labour journalist Sahi described the country’s enforcement system as “very weak”. He pointed out that even in unions, women’s issues remain marginal and unmonitored, making implementation largely symbolic. Sahi suggested that digitised labour inspection and online complaint systems could make enforcement more transparent and accessible, especially for women in the private sector.

At the federal level, FOSPAH has attempted to bridge that gap by conducting awareness sessions across the country to promote compliance with maternity and anti-discrimination laws. The ombudsperson’s office has also begun penalising private firms that dismiss women during maternity leave, signalling that gender-based employment discrimination can fall under the definition of workplace harassment.

Meanwhile, Yazdani believes governance remains the biggest obstacle. She explained that Pakistan’s maternity protections vary by province, and the absence of unified enforcement mechanisms leaves private sector employees vulnerable to exploitation. She called for stronger compliance audits and consistent provincial implementation to ensure that maternity leave is treated as a right, not a favour.

Globally, Pakistan has plenty of examples to emulate. Sweden’s shared parental-leave system, Bangladesh’s six-month paid maternity leave with strict enforcement, and new parental-leave policies in the Philippines and Vietnam all show that childcare is a national infrastructure. When states invest in supporting parents, more women return to work and productivity rises.

This cultural reset is crucial for Pakistan’s future. The core of the issue is that maternity leave is not a pause in productivity; it’s part of life itself. Until Pakistan recognises that, no law will truly protect its working women.

*Names changed to maintain anonymity