Pumping by the printer: Mothers need the legal right to breastfeed at work
Basic health, dignity and equality should not depend on having an unusually understanding boss, writes women's rights campaigner Rachael Bews
Thirty years ago, my mum returned to work while she was still breastfeeding me.
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Without the time, facilities or support she needed, she felt forced to wean me before either of us was ready.
Three decades later, she still talks about the distress it caused her.
Fifteen years into my own career, I thought things must have changed. But after becoming a mother - and hearing the experiences of women across the UK - I realised that too many mothers are still being pushed towards the same impossible choice: continue breastfeeding, or participate in working life.
Women have told me about expressing milk in toilets, cupboards, cars and open-plan offices; one mother told me that she looked up to see a hazard sign above her head in the place she was forced to express milk. Others return to work earlier than they wanted because they could not afford to remain on maternity leave, only to find continuing to breastfeed practically impossible.
Many felt they had no option but to stop.
This is why I launched Don’t Make Me Choose, a campaign calling for clear statutory rights for breastfeeding women at work.
Breastfeeding cannot simply be switched off between nine and five. Milk production continues whether a mother is in an office, on a factory floor or caring for patients. Going too long without feeding or expressing can cause pain, engorgement, blocked ducts, mastitis and reduced milk supply, not to mention disrupting the vital emotional bond between mother and baby.
Expressing is not always a simple alternative. Not every mother responds well to a pump, not every baby accepts a bottle, and producing, storing and transporting enough milk requires time, equipment and suitable facilities.
Yet the UK’s legal protections remain fragmented and inadequate.
Employers must provide somewhere suitable for breastfeeding mothers to rest, and official guidance says it should be hygienic and private enough for expressing. But the Government’s own Equality Act guidance states there is no right to breastfeed at work. Nor is there a specific statutory right to paid breastfeeding or expressing breaks.
This puts the UK behind an international benchmark established more than 25 years ago. Article 10 of the International Labour Organization’s Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183) says women should have daily breastfeeding breaks, or reduced working hours, and that this time should be paid as working time. Its accompanying Recommendation No. 191 calls for hygienic breastfeeding facilities at or near the workplace.
The UK has never ratified Convention No. 183. While countries including Germany, Italy and Spain have done so, British mothers remain dependent on individual employers and their interpretation of what is “reasonable”.
Supportive employers already show that accommodation is possible. Mothers can be offered protected breaks, flexibility, a private room and somewhere safe to store milk. These measures are neither difficult nor extravagant. But basic health, dignity and equality should not depend on having an unusually understanding boss.
Don’t Make Me Choose is calling for a legal right to breastfeed and express at work; paid nursing breaks or an appropriate reduction in working hours; and hygienic, private facilities that are not toilets.
We tell women that breastfeeding benefits maternal and infant health. We also encourage mothers to return to work and contribute to the economy. But we have failed to build the bridge between those expectations.
The result is that women carry the cost in their health, income, careers and breastfeeding journeys ending before they wanted them to.
No woman should have to choose between feeding her baby and earning a living. My mum should not have faced that choice 30 years ago. Mothers should not still face it today.
It is time the law caught up.
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Rachael Bews is the founder of Don’t Make Me Choose.
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