Breastfeeding: Nutrition and Gender Equality

Reference

Breastfeeding is not just a natural process. It also has a profound impact on the health of women and children, social structure and gender equality. Encouraging and supporting breastfeeding not only improves the health of children, but it also promotes gender equality.

Benefits of breastfeeding

• Health benefits: Breastfeeding benefits both mothers and babies as it provides the necessary nutrition and protection to the baby. In mothers, it helps in weight loss and reduces the risk of diseases like breast cancer and ovarian cancer and acts as a natural contraceptive.
  • 45% of deaths among children under five years of age are due to malnutrition.
• Economic benefits: Breastfeeding provides economic benefits to both the family and society. Breastfeeding reduces the cost of purchasing milk, which reduces the economic burden. Breastfeeding also improves the health of babies.
  • The economic loss due to not breastfeeding is approximately US $ 257-341 billion annually.
  • To achieve the Global Nutrition Goal 2025, an investment of US $ 4.70 per newborn is required.
• Environmental benefits: Breastfeeding is also beneficial for the environment as it does not require packaging, processing and transportation, thus reducing the carbon footprint.
• Cognitive development: A study on the effect of duration of breastfeeding shows that long-term exclusive breastfeeding improves IQ.

Factors responsible for low prevalence of breastfeeding

Women face barriers to breastfeeding at all levels, including home, community or workplace. The reasons for this are as follows:

• Gender inequalities
• Excessive marketing and promotion of breast milk substitutes
• Low investment in women's diet and health
• Lack of policies on breastfeeding safety
• Socio-cultural norms
  • Breastfeeding women globally produce approximately 35.6 billion liters of milk annually, but 38.2% of this milk is currently wasted due to cultural and structural barriers.
  • With the increasing trend of urbanization, women are developing a sense of shame about breastfeeding and concerns about their body appearance.
• Attractive promotion of formula milk
  • Strategic and persuasive advertising of formula milk reduces women's self-confidence and belief in breastfeeding. Women's positive attitude towards formula milk is related to marketing.

Impact on gender equality

• Support for working mothers: Providing workplace facilities to promote breastfeeding (such as lactation rooms and flexible working hours) can help women balance work and motherhood.
• Father’s involvement: Support for breastfeeding allows fathers to play an active role in childcare. This helps in sharing family responsibilities equally.
  • Fathers play an important role in supporting breastfeeding, according to a qualitative study from India on factors influencing breastfeeding and maternity leave provisions.
• Social beliefs: Considering breastfeeding as normal and natural develops a positive attitude towards women in society. It helps in promoting gender equality.

Initiatives of various countries and organizations related to breastfeeding

• The Mothers' Milk Tool, developed by Australia, demonstrates the economic value of breastfeeding to society through women's unpaid care work.
• World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated annually in the first week of August, supported by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and several health ministries and civil society partners.
  • The theme for 2024 is 'Bridging the Gap: Breastfeeding Support for All'.
  • It calls for support for breastfeeding to reduce inequalities, aligned with the thematic area of ​​'Survival, Health and Well-being', to achieve Sustainable Development Goals 1 (poverty eradication), 3 (good health and well-being), 4 (quality education), 5 (reduce inequalities), and 11 (sustainable cities and communities).
• According to the 2000 Convention of the International Labour Organisation, ‘a woman shall have the right to one or more daily breaks or to a reduction in working hours in order to breast-feed her child’.
• According to the 'Marketing of breast-milk substitutes: Status report on national implementation of the International Code, 2024', 146 out of 194 countries have legal measures to support the International Code of Marketing of breast-milk substitutes.
• According to UNICEF, breastfeeding rates vary across low- and middle-income and high-income countries. Rates are naturally higher in countries that have policies and programs to protect, support and promote breastfeeding.
• In Norway, fathers get 49 weeks of parental leave. In addition, breastfeeding mothers also get two 30-minute breastfeeding breaks.

Indian Government's Initiatives Related to Breastfeeding

• India's Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 was amended in 2017 to provide 26 weeks of paid maternity leave.
• Mothers Absolute Affection (MAA): It is an intensive program launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on August 5, 2016, with the aim of focusing completely on promoting breastfeeding.
• Vatsalya-Maatri Amrit Kosh: Under this, National Human Milk Bank and Breastfeeding Counseling Center have been established with the help of the Government of Norway.

Tips to promote breastfeeding

• Education and awareness: It is important to spread awareness about the benefits of breastfeeding. For this, government and non-government organizations will have to work together.
• Policies and laws: To support breastfeeding, the government should create policies and laws that can protect the rights of working mothers and provide them with the necessary resources.
  • According to the International Labor Organization, 830 million working women around the world do not receive adequate maternity protection.
• Social support: Along with creating a supportive environment to motivate and support women to breastfeed, support from family and community is also important.