Equal Remuneration Act, 1976: What Replaced It and What Changed

Equal Remuneration Act to Code on Wages, 2019: section map

Where each part of the old Act now sits in the Code on Wages, 2019, and whether the substance changed. New-code sections are grounded in the statutory extract we worked from. Old-Act items are described by subject, because the old Act is repealed and we do not assert its section numbers where we are not certain of them.

New-code sections are grounded in the supplied Code on Wages, 2019 text; old-Act references are described by subject from the repealed Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 and are not cited by section number where we are not certain.

What changed

The biggest change is location. The old Act stood alone as a single-purpose statute about equal pay between men and women. The Code on Wages, 2019 absorbs that purpose into a general wage law that also fixes minimum wages, the timely payment of wages and bonus. The equal-pay rule now lives beside, and shares its vocabulary with, the rest of a worker's pay entitlements.

• The framing shifted from 'men and women workers' to 'no discrimination on the ground of gender' in COW Section 3(1). The comparison is between the same work or work of a similar nature done by any employee, phrased around gender rather than a fixed two-sex pairing.
• The non-discrimination duty is extended. Under COW Section 3(2)(ii) the bar on sex-based discrimination for the same or similar work reaches the conditions of employment, not only the act of recruiting.
• Definitions are consolidated. Instead of a definitions clause serving equal remuneration alone, COW Section 2 supplies one shared set, including appropriate Government, contractor and contract labour, across the whole Code. That changes how coverage and the responsible government are worked out.
• The women's-employment Advisory Committee gives way to a general Advisory Board, named in COW Section 2 and constituted under section 42, a broader body rather than one dedicated to increasing women's employment opportunities.

What stayed the same

• The core promise survives: equal remuneration for the same work or work of a similar nature, owed by the same employer, in COW Section 3(1).
• The anti-avoidance rule survives intact. An employer cannot level down, that is cannot reduce any employee's wage rate to comply, under COW Section 3(2)(i). This was already the position under the old Act.
• The recruitment protection survives, including its limit. There is no sex-based discrimination in hiring for the same or similar work, except where a law in force prohibits or restricts the employment of women in that work, per COW Section 3(2)(ii).
• The unit of comparison is still 'same work or work of a similar nature', so the practical test employers apply to job roles has not been rewritten.

What was dropped or newly added

• Newly added context: the equal-pay duty is no longer a stand-alone entitlement but one strand of a code that also sets minimum wages, wage-payment timelines and bonus, so a single wage definition and a single enforcement machinery now apply to it.
• The dedicated women's Advisory Committee is gone as a named body. Its advisory role is folded into the Code's general Advisory Board.
• The enforcement furniture the old Act carried in its own sections, the registers to maintain, inspectors, claim authorities and penalties, is not reproduced in the Code extract we relied on. In the Code these sit in the general compliance and inspection provisions rather than in Section 3, so they must be read separately.
• Nothing in the supplied Code text narrows the equal-pay principle. The reframing broadens the duty rather than removing it.

Transition traps for employers

• Do not assume old citations still work. Policies, contracts and HR manuals that cite the 'Equal Remuneration Act, 1976' or its sections point at a repealed statute. Update references to the Code on Wages, 2019.
• Do not 'fix' a pay gap by cutting the higher-paid role. COW Section 3(2)(i) forbids reducing any employee's wage rate to comply; parity has to be reached by raising the lower pay.
• Re-test roles against 'same or similar work' using the Code's single wage definition, because the consolidated definitions in COW Section 2 can change who counts as an employee and which government is the appropriate Government for you.
• Extend the review beyond base pay. Because COW Section 3(2)(ii) reaches conditions of employment, audit shift allocation, benefits and promotion criteria for sex-based differences, not just salary.
• Confirm your compliance stack. Registers, returns, inspections and penalties now follow the Code's general machinery and the Central Rules notified on 8 May 2026, so do not keep filing under old Equal Remuneration formats. Read those provisions in full, as they are not in the extract used here.
• Watch the 'restricted work' exception. It still exists, but relying on it needs a current law that actually prohibits or restricts women in that work; a stale internal assumption is not enough.

How to confirm

Read Section 3 of the Code on Wages, 2019 for the equal-pay and non-discrimination wording, and check the repeal schedule at the end of the Code, which lists the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 among the repealed statutes. Both are on indiacode.nic.in. For the register, inspection, claims and penalty provisions not shown here, read the Code's later chapters and the Central Rules on the same source before you change any process.

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