A Win-Win Situation for Urban Working Mothers

In Bangladesh, one of the major sectors where female labour participation is high is the readymade garments. Around 3.2 million women are currently working in this sector. Despite the participation of urban women in this sector and their contribution to national growth, they have very limited access to benefits such as maternity leave, flexible working hours, promotions, better wages, early leave and child-friendly policies. On the other hand, the prevalence of malnutrition is still very high among children, especially in urban poor areas, and inadequate infant and young child feeding practices is one of the main causes. UNICEF and a local NGO Eminence, partnered to work with private sector employers, such as Garment Factories. Through advocacy and technical support, selected Garment factories integrated nutrition counselling and promotion in the workplace, developed support tools for mothers and created a private space in the factory for mothers to breastfeed their infants. As a part of the support from UNICEF and Eminence, a lactation kit was developed for working mothers who were not able to see their babies during the day while they were at work. This kit contains colour coded containers for milk expression and a simple reminder chart to help mothers maintain the 24-hour exclusive breastfeeding cycle. In addition to the health benefits gained by exclusively breastfed children, economic benefits for the employers have been observed. Garment factories found that absenteeism and dropout among female employees, who were mothers with newborns, decreased by more than half.


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