Cressida Pidgeon, Senior Research and Projects Officer, shares a personal reflection on why breastfeeding equity is still out of reach for too many working mothers.
Over the past couple of years, many of my friends have started having children. As I watch my amazing girlfriends navigate the whirlwind of motherhood like champions, all whilst holding down demanding jobs, active lifestyles and whatever else, I’ve been reflecting on how us millennial women were raised to believe we could ‘have it all’. Now, this phrase feels problematic to me for a number of reasons that could fill another blog post. However, it seems clear to me that for women who want to pursue a career alongside having children, there are still many structural inequalities that make having a career and a family incredibly challenging.
Co-writing our report, Breastfeeding in Focus, opened my eyes to the many ways in which workplaces are not designed with mothers in mind. The barriers to breastfeeding at work are a powerful example of this: lack of time, inadequate facilities, anxiety and embarrassment around expressing and storing milk – to name a few. What’s more, with very little legislation protecting breastfeeding in the workplace, the onus is usually on the mum to ask for what they need.
Recent research by Jewell et al., from the University of Reading, puts these issues into sharp focus. Only 39.5% of survey respondents reported having a designated room at work for expressing breastmilk or breastfeeding. Where provided, these were often considered unsuitable, frequently shared with other functions and lacking basic amenities such as blinds for privacy. Shockingly, of respondents who had expressed at work, 25.8% had done so in a toilet and some also reported having to breastfeed their child in a toilet. Some mothers were even directed to the use toilet by their workplace.
Storing expressed milk was another big source of stress. Just 13% of women who had expressed breastmilk at work were able to store it in a fridge which was for that purpose. Instead, most relied on communal fridges (63%), leading to fears about hygiene and the temperature of the fridge, or brought their own cool bags (32%). 10% had ended up throwing their milk away – which must feel like a painful waste of effort!
Whilst this is issue concerns inadequate support for mothers to feed their children how they want to, this is also an issue of gender equality. Breastfeeding sits at the intersection of gender equality and the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’. When women aren’t properly supported to continue breastfeeding after returning to work, they’re often made to choose between their baby’s needs and their own career ambitions.
If ‘having it all’ is today’s mark of equality, it really doesn’t mean much if the world around us hasn’t been redesigned to reflect that possibility. It’s not enough to ‘celebrate’ women balancing it all in unsupportive environments; we need to question why they’re expected to in the first place. To me, a more meaningful step toward equality would be creating a workplace that truly supports women – one where breastfeeding is not a source of stress or shame, but simply part of life.
That means employers providing clean, private spaces to breastfeed or express milk. It means flexible scheduling, open conversations and line managers who are trained to offer support.
But change must also come from the top. Government must strengthen legislation protecting breastfeeding in the workplace, making it a legal requirement for all workplaces to offer private spaces, safe milk storage and paid breaks. The Health and Safety Executive must update guidance to reflect the real risks of breastfeeding at work, and the Department for Work and Pensions should require every employer to have a clear breastfeeding policy. This kind of structural support is crucial to ensuring that mothers are protected by law and empowered to continue breastfeeding if they choose to.