One week into her new job, Mercy Chirwa learned she was pregnant. It was 2012, and she’d just been hired as an Office Assistant for a certain organization that deals with agriculture and nutrition in one of the locations in the capital Lilongwe.Mercy clicked with her co-workers immediately. It was not even long before her boss started asking her about long-term career goals. “They seemed so family-oriented,” says Mercy, now 32. So when her morning sickness became noticeable (“I just sat at my desk looking like death warmed over”), she felt she owed her new work family an explanation. She was only a few weeks along when she walked into the manager’s office one morning, shut the door, and told him she was pregnant.“His face immediately changed,” she narrates. “The first words out of his mouth were, ‘You know you’re still on your 90-day probation period, right.’ So I pretty much knew what that meant.” Three months later, she was let go. The company told her she had failed her probation, but she didn’t buy it.Mercy soon found herself in the awkward position of interviewing for jobs while pregnant. She wasn’t showing yet, but she told recruiters anyway. “I just didn’t want to waste anyone’s time,” she says. Luckily, a certain organization had no qualms about hiring her. Mercy was soon a new employee, though she was told she will use her annual leave for maternity leave. Fair enough!This story isn’t unusual. A lot of women in Malawi have been victims of poor workplace policies or stereotypical tendencies of some managers. It’s either your office does not have a suitable space for breast feeding or there is no provision of allowances for the nanny even when you are working outside your work station.This scenario again, is one of the peculiar situations where one appreciates the disorganization in our policies in maternal health.Both the HIV/AIDS and Infant and Young Feeding Policies advocates for 6 months exclusive breast feeding and yet the Employment Act 2010 allows employers to provide maternity leave to women at a minimum of 8 weeks. With this, one is left with a question, when do we do the exclusive breast feeding?This year, the world is commemorating the World Breastfeeding week with the theme "Breastfeeding and Work: Let's make it Work".In Malawi, very few employers have realistic and generous policies that really serve mothers and babies. Employers have taken advantage of the discrepancies in our policies to go for the minimum as most employers provide 90 day maternal leave which is the only period a working mother would practice exclusive breastfeeding. Very few employers provide additional hours for a mother to breastfeed. Unlike in countries like Brazil, Peru and Colombia the Malawi ministry of health do not have a policy to ask employers to provide spaces and rooms where a baby can be fed or rest while the mother is doing her task on our behalf.The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) asserts that balancing work and family life, including breastfeeding, is increasingly necessary for women’s rights and a strong, healthy and vibrant workforce—and better society. With today's global economics and labour demands rapidly changing, it is worthwhile to treat breastfeeding as a human rights issue not only from the labour point of view but also as a basic lifeline of a newborn.
One week into her new job, Mercy Chirwa learned she was pregnant. It was 2012, and she’d just been hired as an Office Assistant for a certain organization that deals with agriculture and nutrition in one of the locations in the capital Lilongwe.