active were due to household obligations and having to spend most of their time in
looking after their kids and doing household chores.61
a. Female headed households are high in the country.62 Most males reside away from
their families, often in resort and other industrial islands where job opportunities
are easier to find.63 It is also common practice for mothers to migrate to other
islands with their children in search of better educational opportunities keeping
away from their spouses.64 In addition to this, divorce rate is also an aspect that
cannot be ignored, along with multi‐shift school system that requires the single
parentto make several visits to school (parent take responsibility of taking children
to school and back) which in turn interrupts work hours of parents having more
impact on single female parents65
59. Employment Act (2/2008) guarantees 60 days of maternity leave for females and 3 days
of paternity leave is granted to males following birth of a child. During this period
maternity leave was the only leave that was inclusive of weekends and public holidays,
till CSC amended Civil Service Regulation (2010) to exclude all holidays from maternity
leave in May 2013 which was quite a positive step.66
60. Hotels and restaurants sector holds highest share in the economy’s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), and pay third largest income to its workers in Male’.67Representation of
female in the tourism sector is very low despite the existence of employment
opportunities in resorts.68 Tourist resorts are developed on uninhabited islands and
mainly quite far from inhabited islands thus staff finds it difficult to travel daily to
resorts from islands. Additionally, it is not socially acceptable for young unmarried
women to stay on resort islands for extended periods of time while married women and
women with children cannot stay for extended periods on resort islands away from
families.69 Anecdotal evidence suggest that husbands and parents generally object to
sending their wives and daughters to work in resorts as they are under the perception
that resorts are not an appropriate environment for women to work, plus spending
great deal of time away from family is not the most pleasing setting to build a family.
Figure 13 shows some of the relevant recommendations put forward by HRCM after a
rapid analysis undertaken on situation of employment in 2009, which was not
implemented by the government due to reasons that include budgetary constraints and
lack of political will.
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