From Maternity Leave to Meetings: Progress in Supporting Breastfeeding at Work; World Breast-Feeding Awareness Week Campaign 2023

 

Why Do We Celebrate World Breastfeeding Week?

Globally, the first week of August is designated as World Breastfeeding Awareness Week. It is observed in remembrance of the Innocenti Declaration from 1990. Since its inception in 1992, World Breastfeeding Week has featured annual themes on healthcare systems, women and the workplace, the International Code on Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes, community support, ecology, the economy, science, and human rights. The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), a global network that seeks to safeguard, encourage, and promote breastfeeding worldwide, organizes World Breastfeeding Week each year. To ensure that help is delivered to the appropriate populations in the appropriate communities. It works with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Health Ministries, and civil society organizations that endorse these events.

It has also been in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since 2016. A World Health Assembly resolution from 2018 praised WBW as a crucial technique for promoting breastfeeding as it strives to promote awareness of the enormous advantages of breastfeeding for both the health and welfare of infants as well as a broader push for maternal health, with a focus on proper nutrition, poverty reduction, and food security.

Objectives and Goals

•     The main objective of the week is to emphasize the value of breastfeeding, to foster and encourage nursing, and to enhance the health of mothers and infants everywhere in the world. 

•     Breastfeeding offers infants essential nutritional and health benefits that last a lifetime, fostering the development of healthier populations and labor forces in the future.  

•      Greater breastfeeding rates in communities, with the majority of those saved being infants under six months, might prevent more than 700,000 deaths annually.

Breastfeeding Is an Important Element in Global Health

• Better healthcare is promoted by breastfeeding for infants as well as mothers. Breastfeeding lowers a woman's risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetic complications, ovarian cancer, and breast cancer.

• According to estimates, more breastfeeding could prevent 20,000 maternal breast cancer deaths per year.

• Effective maternity assistance boosts the number of breastfeeding mothers while promoting women's and children's health.

• And yet, more than half a billion working women do not currently have access to essential maternity benefits, and many more find themselves without support when they return to work. 

 

 

Aim Of The World Breast-Feeding Awareness Week Campaign 2023

•      Communities flourish simply by rendering breastfeeding at work effectively. Women should not be forced to make choices between continuing their careers and nursing their infants. Regardless of the workplace, industry, or nature of the contract, breastfeeding support is available.

•     The primary focus for this year was breastfeeding and work, offering an innovative chance to promote fundamental maternity rights that support breastfeeding, such as maternity leave for at least 18 weeks, preferably more than 6 months, and post-maternity leave workplace accommodations.

•    The WHO intends to utilize the week to highlight best practices for workplace-related breastfeeding assistance across a variety of contract kinds and industry sectors, in various countries, and to encourage steps that can be taken to help ensure breastfeeding is successful for all working women, wherever they are employed.

•       Only 20% of nations mandate that companies give workers paid breaks and access to facilities for breastfeeding or milk-expressing. Less than half of babies younger than 6 months are solely breastfed.

•      These are among the vital problems that must be resolved if women are to be able to breastfeed for as long as they choose to do so. 

Objectives Of The World Breast-Feeding Awareness Week 2023

In the post-pandemic workplace, parents, workplaces, communities, and governments all play crucial roles in empowering families and maintaining breastfeeding-friendly conditions.

How Can Legislators Enable Breastfeeding and Employment to Coexist?

•  Establishing paid maternity leave of at least 18 weeks, ideally more than 6 months.

• After this time, ensure that employers offer paid time off and a designated area for lactation.

• Ensuring that all women, particularly those working in the unorganized sector or on short-term contracts, have access to maternity benefits.

• Combating discrimination against women in the workplace, especially before and after pregnancy and childbirth.

How Can Workplace and Management Facilitate Breastfeeding and Work?

• Granting maternity leave that, at the very least, complies with national standards.

• Allowing space and time for nursing.

• Offering alternatives that lessen women's absence from their infants after maternity leave, such as:

                                i.            Flexible hours of employment

                              ii.            On-site childcare facility

                            iii.            Working remotely

                            iv.            Part-time employment

Role Of Colleague

•           Promoting flexible work schedules when women return to the workforce.

•       Promoting the rights of women in the workplace.

 

Concluding World Breast-Feeding Awareness Week 2023

The primary focus of Breastfeeding Awareness Week in 2023 was "Let's make breastfeeding and work, work!" The purpose of the course of this week was to draw attention to how crucial it is to aid and empower working women so they may successfully include breastfeeding in their professional lives. In addition to showing the advancements made in providing helpful surroundings, numerous events, campaigns, and efforts were organized to increase awareness of the difficulties working moms experience when trying to breastfeed while also working.

The focus of interactions throughout the week was on supporting regulations that give mothers sufficient breaks and space to pump milk, fostering a culture that values the health and well-being of both mothers and infants and developing breastfeeding-friendly workplaces. The week highlighted the accomplishments of women who successfully juggled breastfeeding with their careers while also highlighting the continuing obstacles and the necessity for ongoing initiatives to normalize and promote breastfeeding in workplace settings.

Working mothers, employers, and policymakers received helpful advice, tools, and insights via workshops, seminars, and online campaigns. To ensure that breastfeeding and work can coexist peacefully for the benefit of both women and their infants, Breastfeeding Awareness Week 2023 promoted discussion, shared experiences, and highlighted creative solutions.