Since 1971 August 26th has been Women’s Equality Day. Although this was a great leap in history for women, we are still faced with rampant sexism today.
Women are discriminated against for many reasons. In North America and Britain and throughout many other parts of the developed world, breastfeeding can be one of them. It is interesting to take mental note of the fact that while women in other cultures are more likely to be discriminated against for other issues, like equality in the workplace and education, they usually are not discriminated against for their God-given right to breastfeed. Take Mongolia for instance…
Mothers are all on equal footing up until they go into labour. And then after that they are routinely asked “How long was it? Did you go for the drugs? Did you do it naturally?” We want every detail, but with that usually comes a silent judgement or comparison for each piece of the story. Same with feeding choice. Even more so for feeding choice. Natural birthing is best. Breastfeeding is best. And no matter whether our story teller chooses the “right” path, or is put into a situation where she has no choice about the direction she takes, she has the freedom to take either. Hooray for human rights. Hooray for feminism. Yet, look out if she takes the path you have strong feelings against. It’s human nature to have a gut reaction when your sister-in-law chooses to breastfeed instead of formula feed like the rest of the clan. It’s like a punch in the face to some people who can’t help but take it as a personal affront. This phenomenon, going both ways, is part of the reason why formula feeding moms and breastfeeding moms generally don’t run in each other’s circles and why breastfeeding moms still receive unequal social treatment.
Another reason breastfeeding moms don’t receive fair treatment is due to the lack of government support and the feared cost of that acceptance. Breastfeeding women in the United States have poor success in extending breastfeeding past a few weeks or months. In 2003, exclusive breastfeeding rates at the six month mark were only 7.9%. I believe this may be correlated with the fact that The United States is one of only five countries world wide that does not offer any form of paid parental leave, and as such puts the breastfeeding relationship in peril. Sometimes it can take weeks to properly establish a successful breastfeeding relationship, but if a woman is forced to go back to her job after 6 weeks becuase that’s all the sick time she could save up, or even after the 12 unpaid weeks FLMA offers eligible mothers, and pump and then nurse when she gets home, the stress of lost sleep and sometimes decreased milk supply as well as a host of other issues that go hand in hand with breastfeeding a baby without proper support causes many women to give up nursing all together. If the US government stood for healthy families, it would make paid maternity/parental leaves a right for new parents. To read more about maternity leave in the United States go here.
Breastfeeding women are also discriminated against for nursing in public, by men and women alike. Breastfeeding in public is a right for most women. In Canada it is, and currently, 43 States protect the rights of public breastfeeding women. However, there are still plenty of ignorant, prudish people who insist that breastfeeding in public is obscene.Women routinely suffer rude looks, disapproving comments, and requests to leave establishments. Facebook’s policy to remove breastfeeding photos from their website is one glaring example of how a gross proportion of society views breastfeeding in terms of sexuality.
Breastfeeding women of colour, or disability, or of a lower socio-economic status are even more vulnerable. Just recently, Marina Chavaz, a Latina woman, was fired from her job at Acosta Taco for bringing her baby into work so she could breastfeed her on breaks. Luckily she stood up for herself and has received a settlement. But is that enough? Only 24 States have laws that protect women who need to pump or breastfeed during their work breaks.
In North America we are fortunate to have the freedom of speech; however, I believe that some people have abused this right and used it to immorally and shamefully attack breastfeeding mothers, regardless of their rights to breastfeed in public.
Breastfeeding is an important part of a healthy society. If it was more valued, breastfeeding mothers would not experience such a lack of resources and support, and breastfeeding rates past a few weeks, or a few months, would not be so low.
I wanted to leave you with a powerful article I found on ParentingWeb that perfectly covers the ongoing inequality for breastfeeding women and why it is important that we stand up for breastfeeding. It’s not just our right as women to choose to breastfeed, it’s our children’s right to eat.
Breastfeeding: A Feminist Issue
by Penny Van Esterik
Breastfeeding is an important women’s issue, human rights issue, and feminist issue, since breastfeeding empowers women and contributes to gender equality. Women who wish to breasted their babies but cannot – because of inadequate support from family or health workers, constraints in the workplace, or misinformation from the infant food industry – are oppressed and exploited. Groups and individuals interested in fighting for women’s rights and human rights should take action to change this situation, and recognise breastfeeding as a woman’s right.
Women are empowered by asserting the value of both their productive and reproductive work. Women should never be forced to make a choice between mother-work and other work. Conditions supportive to successful nurturing, are conditions which reduce gender subordination generally by contradicting negative images of women and emphasising the value of women’s reproductive work.
Why should women’s groups put their valuable time and resources behind breastfeeding campaigns and programs?
1. Breastfeeding requires changes in society to improve the position and condition of women.
Breastfeeding encourages women’s self-reliance by increasing their confidence in their ability to meet the needs of their infants. Breastfeeding requires women to have confidence in themselves, and enough self-esteem to protect (or in some contexts, demand) their rights, including their right to breastfeed. Women with a positive self-image may be less likely to assume that they do not have enough breastmilk, or that their breastmilk is of poor quality.
Breastfeeding focuses attention on the need to insure equality in the distribution of food and other resources within the household. Since breastfeeding women’s nutrient requirements are higher per unit weight than those of adult men, priority must be given to breastfeeding women in the distribution of food. In some societies, women may not receive enough food to insure their own health and of their children.
2. Breastfeeding confirms a woman’s power to control her own body, and challenges the male-dominated medical model and business interests that promote bottle feeding.
Successful breastfeeding reduces women’s dependence on medical professionals and discourages further medicalisation of infant feeding. The knowledge mothers and midwives have about infant care and feeding increases in value and importance.
When breastfeeding is highly valued, the social and physical costs of breastfeeding are more carefully considered. Women’s bodies are finite, and cannot be over-burdened without causing suffering and loss of their productive and reproductive capacities. Breastfeeding mothers need access to food, health care and a supportive environment.
3. Breastfeeding challenges the media model of women as consumers.
The decision not to spend cash on breastmilk substitutes is a rejection of a consumption pattern forcing women to rely on expensive, industrially produced foods. As purchasers of infant formula, women devalue their own capacities, and seek commercial solutions to infant feeding. The constant efforts of infant formula manufactures to expand their markets for these products fuels the advertising campaigns directed to women as consumers.
4. Breastfeeding challenges views of the breast as primarily a sex object.
How did breast become defined as sex objects for male pleasure rather than as the source of food and comfort for children? The sex industry and beauty industry have succeeded in objectifying media and advertising, making it difficult for some women to breastfeed in public. When feeding bottles are used in public for fear of public exposure of breasts, or when women’s reasons for choosing bottle feeding include fears that breastfeeding will alter the shape of their breasts, then women are being treated as sex objects.
Women’s fears about exposing their breast are more than confirmed when North American women are arrested or asked to leave public places for breastfeeding openly. Thanks to the efforts of women activists, breastfeeding women are parts of their bodies and refusing to be treated as sex objects.
5. Breastfeeding requires a new definition of women’s work – one that more realistically integrates women’s productive activities.
In the sexual division of labour, infant care usually falls to women. It is women who have the capacity to provide food for their infants, ensuring women’s self-reliance and their infants’ survival for the first few months of life. Women give birth and produce milk. If the work of breastfeeding is valued as productive work, not a woman’s duty, then conditions for its successful integration with other activities must be arranged.
These arrangements include legislation to provide maternity leaves and nursing breaks, affordable child-care and other strategies developed by women workers. A woman-centred definition of work must take into consideration the importance of nurturance and caring, including breastfeeding.
6. Breastfeeding encourages solidarity and co-operation among women at the household, community, national, and international level.
Within households, women often work together to share child-care and other responsibilities. Other family members can play a useful role in assisting new mothers by providing advice on managing breastfeeding and helping with household tasks.
Internationally, women as individuals and as members of health and consumer organisations, have lobbied governments on behalf of breastfeeding and protested against the commercial interests that put profit over the well-being of mothers and infants. the campaigns against the promotion of infant formula mobilised women all over the world to join consumer groups and to rediscover for themselves how women in developed and developing countries face many similar problems.
Coalitions between women in developed and developing countries on issues like breastfeeding are potential opportunities for empowering women and for identifying common constraints that limit women’s power to care for their children. Men have an important role to play in changing conditions for women and in changing their own attitudes toward breastfeeding and women’s work.
Words and Action
What can women’s groups do?
- Campaign for politicians who support policies that help breastfeeding mothers.
- Lobby national commissions on women and status of women groups to include breastfeeding in their action plans.
- Boycott products whose advertising on TV and in magazines uses women’s breasts as promotional tools.
- Make sure that female babies are breastfed and given complementary foods as often as male babies.
- Encourage artists to present paintings, photographs, poems, and plays celebrating the power of maternity and breastfeeding, and the beauty of breasts.
- Welcome breastfeeding mothers at women’s meetings and seminars, and provide child-care facilities.
- Ask key women in public offices to endorse World Breastfeeding Week and to include breastfeeding messages in their speeches.
How does breastfeeding fit with other women’s issues?
Human rights
By focusing on enabling women to breastfeed, we address women’s rights since the improvement of women’s social and economic status is necessary for supporting breastfeeding. Any violation of women’s right to breastfeed is a violation of women’s human rights.
Reproductive health
Breastfeeding helps child spacing and reduces the risks of ovarian and breast cancers.
Violence against women
Pregnant and lactating women are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Obstacles to breastfeeding such as inappropriate hospital practices and promotion of infant formula are also examples of violence against women.
Sisterhood is powerful
Mother-to-mother support among breastfeeding women is the most important gift one woman can give to another.
The Right Education
Women with higher education are more likely to breastfeed. Education empowers women to ask questions and challenge the health care system and demand a supportive environment for breastfeeding.
Women and Work
As more women enter the formal sector and increase their earning power, they are demanding more child care facilities and opportunities to continue breastfeeding. Productivity and work satisfaction increases.
Backlash!
Some feminists have criticised breastfeeding advocates, arguing that they want to tie women down, and keep them at home to feed babies and change dirty diapers. This is not the case. Women’s groups must make sure that their efforts on behalf of breastfeeding are not used by traditionalists and conservative policy makers against women’s interests. How can this be done?
Request that policy makers consult with women’s groups before breastfeeding legislation is drafted; recognise that breastfeeding is an emotional issue for many women and develop strategies for framing the issue in non-judgmental ways; plan how to counter possible negative effects such as employers threatening to fire women rather than provide maternity entitlements; insure that breastfeeding campaigns stress the welfare of both the mother and child.
Related posts:
- Breastfeeding, Formula Feeding and Social Oppression
- Monday Musings: Why Do So Many Women Living in Poverty Not Breastfeed??
- Breastfeeding Fight Important
- Nurse the Earth
- Monday Musings: The Root Of The Mommy Breastfeeding Wars
Tags: breast milk, breastfeeding is obscene, breastfeeding rights, equality, feminism, formula, maternity leave, sexism, World Breastfeeding Week
Posted by Breastfeeding General, Health Care System, Nursing In Public, Politics Subscribe to RSS feed
Thank you for this.You just made my day!
There is still so far to go in protecting women’s reproductive rights and their rights in the workplace. It’s so disappointing to me that women still face a ‘motherhood penalty’ where their average income declines after giving birth. And that policies such as adequate maternity leave are viewed as a business liability.
Thank you for creating such a thorough and detailed post. It’s really, really great.
Thank you for this wonderful article Melanie. I’m stumbling it for you.
What would happen if a young child walked into a public place such as a shopping mall and spotted a mother breastfeeding. What do you think this child would say? Child: “Mommy what is that lady doing with her baby”? The mother might not want to let her young child know because she doesn’t think the child would understand. The child would be very confused and ask lots of questions.
I’m sorry but I don’t think a shopping mall is the right place to breastfeed your child unless your in a proper changing room/bathroom.
It’s not just the men and women who pass by a mother breastfeeding her infant, it’s also the influence these mothers are posing on the young children and teens walking inside in mall/restaurant ect.
@Jade – You’re kidding right? You must be because your email is bogus so I can’t even address you directly.
First of all, it is my hope that a child would say “Look Mommy! That mommy is nursing her baby!” That’s what my kids say.
Second of all, this can open up dialogue between a mom and her child as to what breasts are for. I guess that you are writing from the position that YOU don’t think your child would understand. Children understand a lot, and if they don’t, then whatever we tell them gets filtered out anyway. If a child asks Why the sky is blue, are they going to understand the real answer? Nope, but if you tell them anyway they’ll probably just say “oh” and be done with it. Kids also think that anything and everything is normal and good and fine until someone tells them otherwise. If you want your children to grow up with a healthy attitude toward breastfeeding then it starts with your attitude towards it.
And breastfeeding moms should be influencing young children and teens. Especially teens for God’s sake! The more a person sees a behaviour the more normal it becomes.
I won’t even respond to your belief that a woman should breastfeed in a bathroom.
Ugh.
[...] Internalized Dominance is when people in the dominant culture come to see the effects of colonization as normal or natural and are unable to see their privilege. They assume that everyone shares their view of the order of things, including stereotypes of colonized peoples and the view of history as written by the colonizers. Health care professionals can have internalized dominance over patients. Inappropriate hospital practices and the promotion of formula are a form of violence towards women. Violations of a woman’s right to breastfeed, including not receiving her permission to give her infant formula or giving her false information can be seen as a violating of a woman’s human rights. To read more about the feminist approach to equality for breastfeeding, please see this post. [...]