In the workplace, women still face a lot of ridicule and discrimination if they want to breastfeed. Already, not many new mothers do this, despite it being the best and most natural course of action. Being subjected to discrimination does not help in this regard at all. Healthcare agencies and departments around the world are recommending that mothers feed their infants for at least six months after birth. Studies have shown that this contributes to boosting the health of both mother and child, and also to increasing the bonds between the two.
But only a small number of women breastfeed today. Many of those who don't are afraid of being subjected to ridicule and discrimination while at the workplace. On the other hand, this behavior has negative consequences on both them and their kids.
In the new study, experts wanted to test and see whether this type of perception was indeed valid beyond the year 2000. They were amazed to learn that the negative perception persisted even today.
Generally, people who were surveyed were less likely to want to work with breastfeeding women, and saw them as being less competent than their peers who were not mothers, or had finished breastfeeding.
Details of the new work appear in the latest issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
PsychCentral reports. The investigation included three separate studies, the team says.
“What’s surprising is that the results from the study showed that the breastfeeding mother was excluded from a potential job opportunity, even though none of the women were visibly breastfeeding,” explains Jessi L. Smith, the lead author of the new journal entry.
“We can only speculate that the evidence for bias would be even greater if people were to rate an actual woman engaging in public nursing,” the investigator goes on to say.
“Breastfeeding is healthy and cheap, but relatively few women do it. A woman may not breastfeed because of worry over how she will be evaluated by other people,” the team writes in the paper.
“Data from the current project suggest that this worry may be warranted, to the extent that breastfeeding is a devalued social category,” they add. Surprisingly, the study revealed that other women were equally as likely to discriminate against breastfeeding women as men were.
Promoting this habit is the only way to move forward, researchers say. If more and more new mothers start doing it, then they will force others to stop having so many prejudices. Discrimination can only continue while limited numbers of women breastfeed at the workplace.
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