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Sales women stand waiting for customer outside the Spice Market store in Cochin, Kerala, India, on Friday, May 29, 2015. While consumer-price gains eased to a four-month low of 4.87 percent in April, this quarter's rebound in oil prices and a potentially weak monsoon threaten to stoke inflation. India's June-September rainfall is seen below normal for a second year, potentially hurting crop output and pushing up food costs. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg Image Credit: Bloomberg

Dubai

Working women in Kerala will now be allowed to sit during work hours.

The Kerala government has agreed to amend its labour laws to oblige employers to allow women working at retail stores to sit and take breaks, amongst other rights.

Last week, the Kerala Cabinet cleared an amendment to the Kerala Shops and Establishments Act, 1960, to provide a “secure environment” for female workers.

However, the change was the result of years of hard-fought battles. Finally, a movement that is led by a women’s union, after male-dominated unions in the country ignored their female counterparts’ concerns, worked.

Particularly, it was a woman called Viji Pankoot who formed the women’s group named Asanghadita Mekhala Tozhilali Union (AMTU) and changed working conditions for women across the state.

Most of these workers are employed at sari stores and other retail shops. Employers kept a close look on their employees, giving them limited bathroom breaks, forbidding them from sitting, talking to colleagues and sometimes, even leaning on a wall could call for salary deductions. The workers were monitored through CCTV footage in the absence of employers.

The new law requires employers to provide a minimum salary of INR 10,000 (Dh 537), an eight-hour work shift, a seating arrangement, a break in the afternoon and a lunch break, the duration is yet to be decided, according to British daily newspaper, The Guardian.

Social media users applauded the move.

Twitter user and a member of the National Commission for Women, India @Sharmarekha posted: “Good start... even in most of the garment factories across India women stand up all day and work. I in all my visits to factories observed this and raised this point with factory owners.”

Tweep Rohini Chaturvedi @rc421 commented on the speed at which India has made progress and had some questions: “Women working in textile sales in Kerala have won a long and hard fight — for the right to sit, to take breaks, to take toilet breaks. Should these issues have even needed a fight? In this day and age? In a “rapidly developing” India?”

Twitter user @nikkupikku chose to shed light on some of the issues women face because of standing for long periods of time: “Did you know female workforce in shops were not allowed to lean against a wall or use a lift — a diktat that has led to varicose veins, swollen feet, and back pain in many. Same is happening in malls... it’s so inhumane.”