Women who breastfeed at work in the District are now protected by anti-discrimination rules that require employers to provide reasonable breaks and a sanitary room — other than a bathroom or toilet stall.
The regulations, which took effect Friday, ensure that women have the right to breastfeed their children “in any location, public or private, where she has the right to be with her child.”
Breastfeeding women must be free from workplace “harassment or ridicule” and any discrimination “because of the exposure of any part of [the] breast during breastfeeding,” the rules state. And all employers must post a breastfeeding policy that contains no “rules or guidelines which dictate whether the mother’s breast, or any part of it, is uncovered.”
“Women who are breastfeeding in the workplace, if they face issues with their employer not allowing them to breastfeed, this measure will protect them moving forward,” said Gustavo Velasquez, director of the D.C. Office of Human Rights.
The D.C. Council adopted a breastfeeding nondiscrimination law in late 2007, but it took nearly two years to get the rules in place.
There remains a nationwide taboo about breastfeeding despite the proven health benefits, said Dr. Sahira Long, a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center and president of the D.C. Breastfeeding Coalition. Parents will decline to breastfeed, she said, “because of the look they get.”
“As far as how widespread it is, having had someone come up to me and ask me to cover or leave in a public library, it’s not rare,” Long said of her experience three years ago.
Breastfeeding protects babies from disease and is associated with lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome, childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes and leukemia, according to the U.S. surgeon general. It may also help protect mothers from some cancers.
It is the nation’s responsibility to protect and support a mother’s decision to breastfeed “by providing an environment that enables her to be successful,” acting Surgeon General Steven Galson recently wrote. Employers must understand, he said, that supporting a breastfeeding worker is “profitable, important and feasible.”
The D.C. Human Rights Office has closed one breastfeeding-related case since December 2007, Velasquez said. A woman who was asked to leave a restaurant because she was breastfeeding filed a complaint, he said, and the restaurant later acknowledged it was at fault.
