Feranaaz Farista and Ameeta Jaga, Ph.D.
In our article for Gender & Society titled, Workplace Breastfeeding as Foodwork in Organizational Settings: Advancing Knowledge from Black, Low-Income Women in South Africa, we highlight the struggles and innovations in these mothers’ attempts to nourish their children and hold on to a job. We interviewed 33 black, low-income mothers diverse in ethnicity, occupation, age, and family size. Our findings revealed a complex planning process around breastfeeding, expressing, and bottle-feeding in contexts of low wage work, which is not always supportive of mothers and the infants’ needs. Our research locates breastfeeding as a form of foodwork when mothers return to work after maternity, and yet workplaces designed on masculine norms lack adequate breastfeeding support. Further, expressed breast milk is stigmatized as tainting, and not suitable for storage in workplace refrigerators where the mothers may work as cleaning staff, for example. The fear of job loss led some women to endure physical discomfort from not being able to express milk during their shifts.
Given high unemployment in South Africa and a long history of marginalization of black women, many mothers feel intimidated requesting the breastfeeding breaks mandated by law. As low wage workers they felt disempowered because they felt they could be replaced. Long hours, insufficient private spaces for pumping, and the lack of suitable refrigerated storage spaces often forced these women to conceal their breastfeeding labor from supervisors. As a result, workplace demands made breastfeeding a lesser priority. While class privileged women in professional jobs might have more options for continuing to breastfeed, working class women had few if any such opportunities. Given the preponderance of women of color in these jobs, we consider the intersectional factors of race, gender and class that affect infant-maternal foodways.
The pressures that these mothers experienced extended beyond the workplace. Many were heads of households without support from their children’s fathers. This reality goes beyond their responsibilities of feeding their child and often includes gendered socio-cultural expectations in their community, such as foodwork being considered women’s work. Hence when a working mother may opt for formula feeding to alleviate these challenges, they may face judgment from their children’s fathers and other family members who view such choices as failures, or who do not wish to incur costs of formula. Notably, while breastfeeding is perceived as “free”, the hidden costs—time, physical strain, and emotional stress—are substantial. As employed women, the invisible labor of foodwork, while exhausting and demanding, is frequently unrecognized in the broader labor discourse.
Most of the women we interviewed could not exclusively breastfeed for six months, contrary to World Health Organization recommendations. These global standards often overlook the diverse socioeconomic and cultural contexts that inform women’s choices, inadvertently pathologizing their knowledge and experiences. Many mothers supplemented breast milk with formula to navigate the challenges of returning to work. Feminist critiques stress the importance of women’s autonomy over their feeding choices, acknowledging that they will opt for practices that suit their circumstances. Global recommendations often reflect the values of resource-rich countries, assuming universal applicability, yet they can be unrealistic for women in high-poverty communities.
However, black low-income women are not merely victims of systemic oppression. They exhibit resilience and innovation in their foodwork practices, drawing on generational knowledge. Despite facing numerous challenges, these women manage to combine the dual responsibilities of feeding their children and earning a living, often opting for formula to ease their burdens—choices that reflect their reality rather than shortcomings. So, what can we do? It is clear that workplaces need to do more to support breastfeeding mothers. This could mean providing private spaces and tools to pump milk or simply making the workforce more understanding of the needs of working mothers. Low-cost solutions can go a long way in creating an environment where women do not have to choose between their jobs and nourishing their babies. Collaboration between policymakers, employers, unions, and activist groups is essential in addressing these barriers.
Author information:
Feranaaz Farista is a Lecturer in Organizational Psychology at the School of Management Studies, University of Cape Town. Her research delves into work-family issues, focusing on the complex intersectional tensions faced by workers in diverse cultural and socioeconomic contexts, particularly in the Global South. Feranaaz co-authors South Africa’s country note for the International Network on Leave Policies and Research and has published in Gender & Society.
Ameeta Jaga (Ph.D.) is Professor of Organizational Psychology in the School of Management Studies, at the University of Cape Town. As a Southern work-family scholar, her research aims for epistemic justice, influencing workplace breastfeeding supports and policy improvements on care work. Ameeta has published in Gender, Work and Organization, Work, Employment and Society, and Journal of Applied Psychology.