Dear women in contractual employment,If you are planning to have a kid, conceive at least 38 weeks before your contract ends. You will find this useful if you ever need to claim maternity benefits from your employer. I had to learn this the hard way by fighting a legal battle and earning an adverse judgement from the Bombay High Court. I had been working as a full-time ad hoc faculty member at a Mumbai college when I found out that I was pregnant. I was happy, but also worried about my job. I was a contractual employee and was made to feel this systematically. We were paid significantly less than our permanent colleagues, had fewer leave entitlements, received no Provident Fund benefits, and worked under a principal who told us to look for a job elsewhere when we raised complaints about our employment conditions. We were, after all, not bonded labourers, she would remind us, lest we forget how “free” our employment status supposedly was.So, I was naturally concerned whether the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 covered contractual employees. I read the Act. Did I work in an establishment employing no fewer than ten people? Check. Had I worked for at least eighty days in the 12 months immediately preceding my expected date of delivery? Check. These provisions exclude the vast majority of women workers in India. I was convinced that I belonged to that small segment of women legally entitled to maternity benefits. I was also relieved to learn that the Act protects women against termination because they are pregnant or on maternity leave. I knew of a colleague who had suffered a miscarriage and gone back to work just a week later, pleading with her confidantes not to spread the news. She feared that her contract might be terminated on some pretext or simply not renewed. It was common practice at this college – as it still is in several educational institutions – to give ad hoc teachers an artificial break during the summer vacation and renew their contracts at the start of the academic year. We lived from one contract renewal to the next, knowing that our continued employment depended as much on the goodwill of those in authority as on our work.Armed with a protective law, I applied for maternity benefits in March 2024, seeking maternity leave from June 14 for a baby due on July 18. My existing contract was to expire on April 30 and was expected to be renewed as per routine practice June 12, when the new academic year began. The dates, as I would soon discover, mattered decisively: my baby had arrived at a legally inconvenient time. The college management rejected my application. They claimed that since my contract ended before my maternity leave was due to begin, I was no longer their employee and therefore not entitled to maternity benefits. That year, my contract was also not renewed as per usual practice. My position was advertised as vacant and interviews were held. I applied. Two weeks after I gave birth, I sat for an interview for renewal of my contract. I was told that although I was qualified and competent for the job, the management needed someone who could resume work immediately. I could not. On that ground alone, they hired someone else. I was left incredulous. I could see this as nothing other than the college coolly discriminating against me because of my pregnancy. I found myself in a Catch-22: according to the college, I couldn’t claim maternity benefits because I was no longer an employee, and I couldn’t remain an employee because I couldn’t return to work immediately after childbirth.I decided to challenge the denial of my rights legally. My lawyer, Rohini Thyagarajan, made me do the homework of reading the case law. Woman after woman in contractual employment had refused to be treated as disposable for the ease of doing business. In many of the cases brought to court by them, the benches affirmed that women should not have to choose between work and motherhood. They interpreted the Maternity Benefits Act broadly to produce more socially just outcomes: extending maternity benefits to daily-wage workers, reinstating employees whose contracts had not been renewed after they applied for maternity leave, recognising the legal fiction that could preserve maternity rights even after a contract had expired, and penalising institutions that blatantly violated the law. We filed a complaint with the Maternity Benefits Inspector. The process was long and involved multiple hearings. Mine was a novel case for her. She had not previously come across a contractual teacher pursuing maternity benefits. Denial of these benefits and termination for demanding them was common, but challenges to them were rare. For contractual workers in general, filing cases against their employers is risky and costly. For a woman contractual employee seeking maternity benefits when physically recovering and emotionally vulnerable, even more so. The inspector ruled in my favour. She ordered the college to pay me my salary for 26 weeks along with medical bonus and to not terminate my services during the maternity leave period. The appellate authority upheld her order when the college appealed against it. I was beginning to feel that justice, however narrow and belated, had been served. Then, on July 13, 2026, these orders were quashed by a division bench of the Bombay high court. Entitled to maternity benefits? No, because my contract had expired and I had ceased to be an employee of the college before my maternity leave was due to begin. Wrongfully discharged? No. Because, in the court’s words, “The cessation of service was the natural consequence of the expiry of a fixed-term ad-hoc contractual appointment and not the result of any punitive or discriminatory action on the part of the Petitioner-College.”As I stared at this order, I imagined its implications. As India’s new labour codes legitimise fixed-term employment, more and more women will be routinely deprived of maternity benefits. Employers may simply not renew the contract of a woman, however long she may have worked with them, if they get even a whiff that she is pregnant or planning to have children. From there it’s an easy route to deny maternity benefits because no employer-employee relationship exists. In some parallel world, this would be recognised as a repulsive case of sex-discrimination. In my world, it was reduced to a technical detail of how contracts work. So, while I prepare to appeal before the Supreme Court of India, I feel compelled to offer this advice to women in contractual jobs: If your contracts are renewed for periods shorter than 8.7 months, get ready to take care of yourself and your baby without a job and wages. For the luckier ones with longer contracts: don’t leave conception or adoption to luck. Plan them as you would plan a surgical strike. You may think babies arrive when they wish, but employers keep their eyes on the calendar. Yours sincerely, Paankhi AgrawalThe author can be reached at paankhi.agrawal@gmail.com.