Judith  Galtry (Dep. of  Women's Studies Victoria University Wellington 
New Zealand) 

Background Paper Prepared for WABA's 1998 Conference on Women, Work, and Breastfeeding  

Breastfeeding Rates in New Zealand  

The only agency that collects breastfeeding statistics in New Zealand is the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society; a non-governmental organisation dedicated to improving the wellbeing of New Zealand children and their families. 

According to the Plunket Society's most recent breastfeeding statistics, in 1993, at two weeks after birth 83% of mothers were breastfeeding while, by 1997, this figure had declined to 72%. (These figures do not define the amount of breastfeeding but include any situation in which a baby received any breastmilk). In 1993, at six weeks after birth, 75% of mothers were breastfeeding but, by 1997, this figure had declined to 65 %. 

The labour market participation of New Zealand women with infants 

In the employment sector, one of the biggest changes in recent decades has been the greater involvement of women, in particular, partnered women and those with children, in the labour market. Whereas it was unusual for New Zealand women with infants to be in full-time paid work in the 1970s and even during most of the 1980s, this phenomenon is becoming increasingly common. 

In 1986, 21% of New Zealand mothers with a child under one were recorded as being in paid work, but by 1996 this had risen to 31%. In 1991, almost one-fifth of partnered women appeared to be back at working a month after childbirth, with half of these working full-time. Although the biggest increase has been amongst mothers with a partner already in paid work, there has also been a rise in the proportion of sole mothers returning to the labour market and in the proportion of couples where the fathers did not have a job. This growth has been brought about by a wide range of factors including changes in expectations regarding women's and men's roles and responsibilities; the growth of service industries; the increasingly well documented benefits, in terms of labour market outcomes, to women of taking minimal breaks from paid employment; the increase in state subsidised childcare provision, especially for children under one year; the availability of job protection through parental leave, and economic necessity, often associated with a decline in male income mainly through unemployment 

 How are breastfeeding and paid work reconciled in New Zealand  

Although the International Labour Organisation had established its maternity convention as early as 1919, it was not until 1948 that some form of job-protected maternity leave was introduced in New Zealand. Even then, it covered only maternity leave within the public service. Over thirty years would pass before statutory leave was extended to the private sector. In 1980, the Maternity Leave and Employment Protection Act was passed which enabled women to take 26 weeks of unpaid leave around the birth and / or adoption of a child while ensuring job protection. As a result of extensive lobbying by various women's organisations and trade unions for gender-neutral leave that would apply to both parents equally, parental leave legislation was enacted in 1987. This legislation extended both the leave entitlement to the mother of the child or her spouse and the period of leave to 52 weeks. Currently, this leave is unpaid. There are also various restrictive eligibility criteria relating to the number of hours worked and employment continuity. More specifically, the biological or adoptive mother or her spouse have to work for at least ten hours per week for the same employer for the 12 months preceding the expected delivery date. This legislation also provides for 14 weeks maternity leave and up to two weeks paternity leave. 

In June 1996, the Department of Labour published a survey of parents who were eligible for parental leave under the terms of this legislation. It indicated that many women (and fewer men) were using the provisions of the Act successfully. However, because of legislative eligibility criteria, access to leave is limited for those in casual or seasonal work. This is significant given the increasing casualisation of the female workforce since the introduction of the 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA) and the subsequent decline in union membership among New Zealand women. 

1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA) 

As part of the ongoing process of economic restructuring which commenced in New Zealand in 1984, the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) was introduced in 1991. This legislation, which was opposed by trade unions and many women's groups, signaled a move away from workers' collective contracts with employers to individualised employment contracts. As a result of this legislation, collective lobbying by employees for improved working conditions, such as those to facilitate breastfeeding in the workplace, is now more difficult. 

Women and Trade Unions in New Zealand  

Associated with the introduction of the ECA, there has been a decline in the number of workers who are unionised in New Zealand. Although there are no exact figures regarding the proportion of women in the labour market who belong to unions, just over half (57%) of all trade union members are women. It is estimated, however, that only approximately 40% of the New Zealand workforce currently belong to unions. 

The Need for Leave Payment  

As discussed, parental leave is currently unpaid in New Zealand. A report on parental leave by the Ministry of Women's Affairs (1995) found that New Zealand provisions include strong job protection and good access to maternity, paternity, and extended parental leave. However, in line with trends reported in several other industrialised countries including the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, this report suggests that taking unpaid leave does not represent a genuine option for some groups of New Zealand women, in particular those on low family income and / or those with partners who are not in paid work. This has implications for breastfeeding practice among these groups of women. 

Payments associated with maternity or parental leave have been negotiated in some employment contracts, mainly in the public sector. In addition, some state-funded income support may be available to women on leave, including through the 1976 Domestic Purposes Act, which provides income support to sole parent families. In New Zealand, as in most other countries, these families are generally headed by women. 

The 1997 EEO Trust survey of equal employment opportunity awareness, acceptance, and activity within New Zealand organisations found that between a quarter and a third of organisations surveyed granted parental leave beyond that provided by legislation. The highest proportion of these by far was in the education sector (65 percent). Just over a third of public sector organisations provide this, as do a quarter of the private sector companies surveyed. Furthermore, a survey of employment contracts showed that 39 percent of contracts had above-standard parental leave provisions.  Seventeen percent of private sector contracts had payment available, mainly in the finance and banking sector. However, other surveys suggest that these figures may be inflated due to unrepresentative samples. 

In general, individually negotiated provisions for parental leave payment tend to favour only those women (and, sometimes, men) with specialised occupational skills who are difficult to replace in the job market. For instance, a large New Zealand law firm recently announced that it intends to provide maternity leave at full pay to senior associates if they resume paid employment within three months of childbirth. Women who take a longer period of leave forego any payment. Moreover, this gender-specific provision is not available to women clerical workers and other women workers in the same firm. It is likely, therefore, that only those women with the most negotiating power to access the necessary conditions to facilitate breastfeeding or pumping in the workplace will have any genuine choice over the integration of these two activities. 

Campaigns for Parental Leave Payment  

In 1994, a campaign for paid parental leave was mobilised by various women's organisations and trade unions. The 12 Weeks Paid Parental Leave Campaign argues for a minimum paid leave period of twelve weeks and for payment to be set at 100% of earnings, although limited to the average male wage. 

In addition, the "centre-left" Labour and "far-left" Alliance parties in the New Zealand Parliament, have outlined policies / draft legislation for some form of paid parental leave. These are for 12 weeks and 6 weeks respectively. In the latter instance, the payment, would be funded through a levy on employers while the Labour Party's initial six week period is to be reviewed after two years and would be financed from general taxation. Unfortunately, neither of these parties are currently in power and the current Coalition Government shows little sign of endorsing such progressive legislation in its drive to "free up" the New Zealand economy. 

There is, therefore, little scope for optimism regarding the imminent introduction of paid parental leave. As internationally renowned New Zealand feminist economist and author of Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and what Women are Worth, Marilyn Waring points out: 

Women who breastfeed in accordance with the best practise for the health of the mother and child are simply expected to get on with it, to continue their valueless productive and reproductive activity in their own time. 

Although discussions about parental leave, including the issue of payment, have extensively addressed pregnancy and childbirth, the subject of breastfeeding has rarely been raised. This is, in part, due perhaps to the fact that breastfeeding, although potentially strengthening the case for paid leave, poses difficulties for the goal of gender equity in the employment arena. In particular, in a conservative and increasingly targeted policy climate, breastfeeding has the potential to undermine the gender-neutral direction which leave policy has taken in recent years. 

Breastfeeding Breaks in the Workplace  

Compounding the lack of choice over breastfeeding for many women in paid work is the fact that New Zealand, like Australia and the United States, has no legislated provision for breastfeeding breaks in the workplace. The need for breastfeeding breaks in the workplace was mentioned in submissions by various trade unions to the 1980 Maternity Leave and Employment Protection Bill and the 1986 Parental Leave and Employment Protection Bill although, surprisingly, not by health professionals or women's groups. Overall, there appears to have been little awareness or acceptance of this particular ILO recommendation amongst feminist organisations in New Zealand. 

Onsite Child Care  

Although there is much support in the international literature for the provision of on-site childcare to facilitate breastfeeding and paid employment, it is perhaps unrealistic to expect that this provision will ever meet the needs of more than a relatively small group of New Zealand mothers. For instance, many women are employed in businesses too small to warrant such provisions while others work shifts or hours that are not met by these formalised childcare arrangements. 

The Use of Breast Pumps in the New Zealand Workplace 

The use of breast pumps is still relatively unusual in the New Zealand workplace. However, given the lack of paid parental leave provision and other labour market policies supportive of breastfeeding, it is likely that the adoption of breast pump technology will increase as more women resume paid work in the early months following childbirth. 

Marcia Annandale, a New Zealand based lactation consultant and long-time breastfeeding activist, has been involved in advising women as to various options regarding infant feeding, including the hireage of breast pumps, since 1989. She reports that although women returning to paid employment comprise only a small number of those hiring breast pumps, there is an increasing tendency for mainly middle-class Pakeha (European) women in professional occupations to hire or purchase breast pumps. Others involved in breastfeeding advocacy have confirmed this picture. 

In support of this observation, some North American studies suggest that managing breastfeeding in the workplace is possible, although not without difficulties, mainly for women in professional or semi-professional type jobs. This seems to be associated with the greater employment flexibility and control experienced by such workers. Within the private sphere too, this group is more likely to be able to afford the necessary support to facilitate this integration. For instance, Penny Van Esterik has pointed out that the dominant perception of breastfeeding as an issue of individual choice as opposed to policy concern is more easily sustained by "elite, well educated women with servants to help them integrate their bureaucratic and domestic work". In support of this, the New Zealand media carries examples of mothers in high paid and high status occupations with 'nannies' who bring the baby into the workplace to be breastfed. 

Also increasing the likelihood that more New Zealand women will pump breastmilk in the workplace is the trend toward the adoption of American-style family-work initiatives. For instance, at a 1993 conference Make your Workplace "Family Friendly", organised by the Ministry of Women's Affairs, the keynote speaker Arlene Johnson, vice-president of Families and Work Institute, New York, drew attention to a number of "family-friendly" workplace initiatives instituted by various American companies. Included among these programmes was a consulting firm with facilities for mothers to pump and refrigerate breastmilk. 
This prevalent North American approach to integrating breastfeeding and paid employment also features in the New Zealand populist literature on "how-to-manage-breastfeeding-and-paid-work". For instance, a 1994 book aimed at "the working mother" discusses in detail the issue of breast pumping in the workplace. 
Further echoing the advice given in much of the American literature, the author suggests the use of such places as "stairwells" or "toilets" to express or pump breastmilk for women employees without their own offices. 
 

Breastfeeding and Paid Work - the Experience of Pacific Islands Communities in New Zealand  

In New Zealand, the Pacific Islands communities provide a documented example of the way in which breastfeeding practices are adversely affected by economic constraints and employment related factors. Findings from a five year longitudinal study of over 4,000 New Zealand children, the Plunket National Child Health Study, indicate that resumption of paid employment, or study, represents the primary reason for cessation of breastfeeding between six weeks and three months after the birth among women from Pacific Islands communities. This was also a major factor influencing cessation of breastfeeding within the first six weeks, and from three to six months following the birth amongst the same group. By contrast, for the overall population, the main reason cited for giving up breastfeeding (up to six months of age) was "perceived insufficient milk", while return to work was cited as one of the next two most common reasons for ceasing breastfeeding at three to six months after the birth. 

The difficulties experienced by many women from Pacific Islands communities in terms of combining breastfeeding and labour market participation is likely to be associated with a number of employment-related factors specific to this group. These include not only early return to paid employment following childbirth, often necessitated by economic factors, but also the longer number of hours worked, occupational type and a high incidence of shiftwork. For instance, Pacific Islands women are more likely than other workers to be employed as personal and protective service workers, including cleaners, the most common occupation for this group of women. Many of these workplaces may not be conducive to breastfeeding as they are unlikely to have the material facilities or the working conditions required to support breastfeeding or the pumping / expression and storage of human milk. Finally, economic pressures and, hence, the need to resume paid work are often greater for Pacific Islands and Maori mothers because of the relatively high rates of both sole motherhood and male unemployment within these communities. 

Nevertheless, it is clear, by virtue of its relatively extensive practice in recent years, that breastfeeding has been regarded as an important practice within Pacific Islands communities. A recent case study describes the distress experienced by a Samoan mother, economically compelled to resume paid employment one month after giving birth, over her inability both to fully recover from childbirth and to continue breastfeeding her baby. The researchers report that: 

The mother in this family was in the paid workforce during the year before the child was born. She had 2 older children aged 2 and 8 years at the time of the birth....When the infant turned 1 month of age she resumed a 40-hour week of shift work, leaving the infant at home in the care of his grandfather. "I had no choice, we needed the money so I went back to work when [child] was 1 month old, I went full-time." The mother explained that she was still breastfeeding her baby and, had she been able to afford it, she would have stayed home for a year. But she could not afford to wait for the lump sum payment - she needed the money on a day-to-day basis....She summarised her own experience this way: "I would have loved to have stayed home longer with my babies. For my own health as well, but because of all the bills..." 

Strategies and Initiatives which Support Breastfeeding in the Workplace  

In the New Zealand context, there has been a conspicuous lack of documented discussion about the integration of breastfeeding and paid employment. However, as part of World Breastfeeding Week 1993, a charge nurse described her breastfeeding -friendly workplace at a La Leche League led workshop. Provisions extended to breastfeeding mothers included the ability to begin work at 8am rather than the usual 7amcommencement; one hour for lunch as opposed to the usual 30 minute lunchbreak in order to maximise mothers' time with their babies in the hospital crèche; a private room in which to breastfeed when necessary as, at that stage, one mother's partner brought the baby in to be breastfed at dinner time, and an increased sensitivity to the mother's needs for time off work when the baby was sick. In addition, staff were advised of the need for breastfeeding mothers to have their breaks at fixed times. 

In Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, there are several downtown childcare centres that primarily cater to infants and children of public servants. One of these has provisions for breastfeeding mothers in the form of sleep rooms with armchairs. In addition, childcare staff contact breastfeeding mothers when their babies are ready to feed. Another central city childcare centre, which takes infants from two months old, similarly has provisions for breastfeeding mothers. The crèche supervisor pointed out that the glidetime (flexitime) available to public servants also facilitates breastfeeding. She nevertheless suspected that the various pressures faced by mothers in paid employment, even by those with greater flexibility and control over their work environments, increases the likelihood that the child will receive formula supplements at an earlier stage than might have otherwise occurred. 

Conclusion  

I intend to leave drawing conclusions and / or implications for policy until the end of WABA's 1988 conference on Women, Work and Breastfeeding. Participation in this conference provides an important opportunity to listen to the experience of those in other countries and to incorporate some of this thinking into developing appropriate policy recommendations and initiatives and strategies to support breastfeeding among working women in both the New Zealand and the wider South Pacific contexts. 

Acknowledgements 

I wish to express my gratitude to the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action who along with the New Zealand Ministry of Women's Affairs, and the New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science and Technology sponsored me to attend this conference. I also wish to acknowledge funding for this ongoing research from the Victoria University of Wellington's Foundation Scholarship, the Victoria University's Internal Grants Committee and the Claude McCarthy Trust. I would also like to thank Marcia Annandale and those other New Zealanders involved in advocacy and research regarding breastfeeding.