The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 is an Indian statute that mandated equal pay for men and women workers performing the same work or work of a similar nature, and prohibited sex-based discrimination in employment matters. Its origin lies in the constitutional directive under Article 39(d) of the Directive Principles of State Policy, which calls upon the State to secure equal pay for equal work for both sexes. The Act was also a response to India's ratification of the International Labour Organization's Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100). It was first promulgated as the Equal Remuneration Ordinance, 1975, during International Women's Year, and subsequently replaced by Act No. 25 of 1976, which came into force on March 8, 1976.
The Act's core mechanism rested on two key provisions: Section 4 obliged every employer to pay equal remuneration to men and women for the same or similar work, forbidding the reduction of a worker's wage rate to comply with the Act. Section 5 prohibited discrimination on the ground of sex in recruitment, promotions, training, and transfers for the same or similar work. The Act defined "same work or work of a similar nature" by reference to the skill, effort, and responsibility required.
The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, has been repealed and subsumed into the Code on Wages, 2019. The Code on Wages, which consolidated four central labour laws, carries forward the principle of equal remuneration in its Chapter III. The new Code retains the prohibition on gender-based discrimination in wages and recruitment for the same or similar work, while broadening the protected category beyond the binary male-female framing and extending the protections to all sectors, including the unorganized economy.