World Breastfeeding Week is a celebration every year from August 1-7 in more than 170 countries worldwide. This commemorates the Innocenti Declaration signed in August 1990 by WHO, UNICEF, policymakers and other organizations to protect, promote and support breastfeeding.
Coordinated by World Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy (WABA), this year's celebration revolved around the theme, "Breastfeeding and Work: Let's Make it Work!". WABA calls for effort from all levels in different sectors to support women to combine breastfeeding and work. Much success has been achieved since the World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) campaign on the Mother-Friendly Workplace Initiative in 1993. Furthermore, the revised ILO Convention 183 on Maternity Protection paved the way to a more mother-friendly workplace, stronger maternity entitlements, and actions on breastfeeding awareness from more countries. This year, they put emphasis once more on the enactment of imaginative legislation protecting breastfeeding rights of working women and the establishment for its reinforcement.
Despite the awareness campaigns these organizations come up with, many are still judgemental about the whole concept of breastfeeding in the workplace or anywhere public. There are still incidents going on where mothers are discriminated while nursing in public. For instance, a mother was shamed on social media when a stranger snapped a photo of her nursing her son in a restaurant. The comments that followed were harassing and shameful. Full report can be read on Masable. In 2013, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Equal Opportunity Employment Commission filed a civil suit, on behalf of Bobbi Bockoras, against Verallia North America. The company where Bobbi worked for 6 years failed to provide a clean, private and non-bathroom space area where she can breast pump during her breaks. Instead she was forced to breast pump in a locker room full of dead bugs and dirt as reported in NBC News.
Incidents like these resulted to a lot of movements to normalize breastfeeding and to desexualize the female body.
