Let’s make breastfeeding and work, work!
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More than half a billion working women are not given essential maternity protections in national laws
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Just 20% of countries require employers to provide employees with paid breaks and facilities for breastfeeding or expressing milk
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Fewer than half of infants under 6 months of age are exclusively breastfed.
Objectives of #WBW2023
Inform
people about working parents’ perspectives on breastfeeding and parenting
Anchor
optimal paid leave and workplace support as important tools to enable breastfeeding
Engage
with individuals and organisations to enhance collaboration and support for breastfeeding at work
Galvanise
action on improving working conditions and relevant support for breastfeeding
About the campaign
Women should not have to choose between breastfeeding their children and their work.
World Breastfeeding Week is held in the first week of August every year, supported by WHO, UNICEF and many Ministries of Health and civil society partners. This year’s theme will focus on breastfeeding and work, providing a strategic opportunity to advocate for essential maternity rights that support breastfeeding – maternity leave for a minimum of 18 weeks, ideally more than 6 months, and workplace accommodations after this point. These are urgent issues for ensuring women can breastfeed as long as they wish to do so: more than half a billion working women are not given basic maternity provisions; many more find themselves unsupported when they go back to work.
WHO will use the week to champion best practices for workplace-related breastfeeding support, in different countries, across different contract types and sectors, and promote actions that can be taken to help ensure breastfeeding works for all women who work, wherever they work.
Key Messages
- Making breastfeeding at work, work, makes societies work! Breastfeeding provides vital health and nutritional benefits for children with positive lifelong impacts, building healthier populations – and workforces - for the future.
- Women shouldn’t have to choose between breastfeeding their children and their jobs. Breastfeeding support is possible regardless of workplace, sector, or contract type.
- Effective maternity protections improve children’s and women’s health and increase breastfeeding. And yet, at present, more than half a billion working women lack access to vital maternity provisions; many more find themselves unsupported when they go back to work.
- All women everywhere – no matter their work - should have
- At least 18 weeks, preferably more than 6 months, paid maternity leave;
- Paid time off for breastfeeding or expressing milk upon returning to work;
- Flexible return to work options.
- Legislating at least 18 weeks, preferably more than 6 months, paid maternity leave.
- Ensuring employers provide paid time off and a dedicated space for breastfeeding or expressing milk after this period.
- Ensuring all women have access to maternity entitlements, including those in the informal sector or on limited contracts.
- Tackling employment-related discrimination against women, including during and after pregnancy and birth.
- Providing maternity leave that – at minimum - meets national requirements.
- Providing time and space for breastfeeding or expressing and storing breastmilk.
- Providing options that reduce separation of women from their babies after maternity leave, such as:
- Flexible work schedules
- On-site childcare
- Teleworking
- Part-time work
- Letting mothers bring their babies to work.
- Being supportive of flexible work arrangements when women return to work.
- Championing women’s rights in the workplace.
Webinar
Join us to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week.
- DATE: Thursday, 3 August, 2023
- TIME: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
- LANGUAGES: English, Spanish and Portuguese, with simultaneous interpretation in all languages.
- More information
Resources
