KATHMANDU NEPAL – “I am counting my fingers waiting for the next month,” says Shanti Rai to her co-workers before going back to work packing groceries for the customers at a local supermarket in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
Rai is anticipating the opportunity to visit her 10-month-old son.
“I will be visiting him in a month,” Rai says with a smile on her face.
Rai and her husband live in Kathmandu. But their son lives with his paternal grandparents in Jhapa, a district 600 kilometers away. Her husband has a full-time job, and once Rai’s 60-day maternity leave ended after her son’s birth, she had to go back to work too at Bhatbhateni Supermarket and Departmental Store, the largest supermarket chain in Nepal.
“It is not easy for me to live apart from my newborn son,” Rai says with tears in her eyes.
Rai, who is in her mid-20s, says she initially tried running back and forth from her office to her home to breast-feed her baby during her lunch hours. But she says that this arrangement didn’t allow her to care properly for her son or to perform in the workplace. Her salary was also deducted every time she was late from feeding her child. She says she had no other choice but to send him to his grandparents.
“It was already difficult for us with our meager earnings, and with my salary deducted, it was getting difficult to survive,” Rai says dejectedly.
She also worries about her son’s health because she can’t breast-feed him, which she says is crucial to his nutrition. Rai also says that her breasts hurt every day because the milk is not being removed. The leaking milk also stains her clothes, which she says humiliates her and also serves as a reminder of her son, who can’t be with his mother.
She says she is excited to see him but sad the visit can’t be longer.
“I will be staying only for a week or two,” she says. “I am not sure how will I bring myself to leave him back in village.”
Rai says she feels guilty for not being with her child but that she is working in order to secure his future.
“I have to earn now so as to be able to educate my child in future,” she says.
Still, she says she feels the emotional weight of it.
Mothers who work full-time in Nepal say they can’t care for their children, which poses a particular problem when it comes to breast-feeding. Experts say breast-feeding promotes nutritional and emotional benefits for mother and baby. The government here has increased maternity leave, but mothers say it is not enough. New centers where mothers can feed their infants have emerged throughout the country, but many say they are expensive and uncommon.
The female employment rate in Nepal is 78.5 percent, according to the Nepal Labor Force Survey, published in 2008 by the Central Bureau of Statistics. There are 6,259,000 working women over the age of 15 in Nepal, with 90 percent of them in rural areas and 10 percent in urban areas.
Like Rai, other mothers are torn between working fulltime in order to support their children financially and staying at home to care for them.
While Rai works for a private company, Pramila Shrestha, an officer in Nepal's Armed Police Force, works for the government. Still, their predicament is the same.
Shrestha also says that she can’t breastfeed her two young children because she works fulltime. She leaves home at 9 a.m. and returns after 6 p.m. She travels eight kilometers during her lunch hour to see her kids in the afternoon.
“It is really painful to think of my child being deprived of their mother’s care,” she says. “But I cannot compromise with my duty.”
The World Health Organization emphasizes breast-feeding for the optimal development and health of a child. Local health professionals cite various reasons for the importance of breast-feeding.
Rekha Adhikari, a dietician at Kanti Children’s Hospital, says that every child needs 180 days of exclusive breast-feeding, when babies eat and drink nothing except their mothers’ milk. But it is impossible for working mothers to exclusively breast-feed their kids, Adhikari says.
“We do not get enough leave to breast-feed the child,” she says.
She says that the rate of exclusive breast-feeding in Nepal was 53 percent back in 2006 and that it is decreasing with the increasing involvement of women in paid work.
She says that breast milk has several major benefits: It is nutritious for babies because it has most of the micronutrients, especially vitamin A, necessary to strengthen the immune system. It is also more economically viable because parents don’t have to buy baby food. Psychologically, it strengthens the bond between the child and the mother.
Dr. Saujanya Karmacharya of the Armed Police Force Hospital says that mothers are equally affected if they do not breast-feed their children. Various studies have shown that mothers who do not breast-feed are more prone to breast cancer. She adds that breast-feeding helps new mothers to lose weight gained during pregnancy. It also strengthens the bond between the child and mother.
Beyond losing this bond, both Rai and Shrestha say they worry about their children’s health because they can’t breast-feed them.
“For a 6-year-old child, my daughter is underweight,” Shrestha say worriedly. “Maybe it is because of inadequate breastfeeding.”
Rai also says that she lives in constant fear that her baby may not be healthy because she can’t breast-feed him.
Children deprived of their mothers’ milk face various health risks from stunted growth to a weakened immune system, Adhikari says.
The Nepali government has increased paid maternity leave from 45 days to 60 days for government jobs. Mothers can also extend maternity leave up to 90 days, says Vishnu Kaji Thapa, undersecretary of the Ministry of Law and Justice. Since 2007, fathers also receive 15 days of paternity leave, and the government allots 5,000 rupees ($56) per family for postpartum care. Thapa attributes these changes to the increase in the number of women working in Nepal.
But the provisions differ for employees in the private sector. Sabina K.C., a common last name, says that her employer, Global Bank Limited, offers only 45 days of paid maternity leave to its female staff. It counts additional days as unpaid leave.
Adhikari says that maternity leave is not long enough.
“The maternity leave in both government and nongovernment agencies is not adequate, which makes is very challenging to the working mothers to continue their job after childbirth,” she says.
Some women say this forces them to leave their jobs. Sharmila Shrestha, also a common last name, used to work in a private clinic in Kathmandu, where she received 60 days of paid leave. But she says that she wanted to exclusively breast-feed her child, so she has stayed at home beyond this period. She is not sure if she will still have a job when she is ready to go back to work.
In addition to increasing provisions for families of newborns, the government established a child care center in 2001 inside Singha Darbar, an old palace that is home to most of the government offices. Kamala Sapkota, the administrative officer in the center, says that the center currently cares for 40 children ages 3 months old to 3 years old.
“The mothers working inside Singha Darbar are very happy as they can drop in to the center to check on their wards anytime and also some of them come to breast-feed their kids,” Sapkota says.
With financial support from the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, the center was started by the initiative of the Civil Servants Wives Association, a group of wives of government officials. It initially provided free service to the working mothers. But with inflation, the center now charges 1,000 rupees ($11) for the officers and 700 rupees ($8) for clerical staff.
New mothers say that the center has empowered women to be able to work and breast-feed their children.
“I would have to stay on unpaid leave if there was no child care center,” says Tara Poudel, who works for the Ministry of Peace and Reconciliation.
Saraswati Neupane, who works in the Ministry of Law and Justice, agrees.
“I used to be [in a] lot of pain, as I couldn’t pump out the milk,” she says. “But now I can visit my child and breast-feed.”
Modern women are burdened with a double workload, says Sangita Ghimire, manager of the child care center. She adds that women are expected to simultaneously excel both in their career and in their reproductive roles and duties, which is challenging.
“We started the center to help women cope with their double responsibilities,” Ghimire says. “Such centers should be opened in every office.”
The affordability of the center makes it popular among the government workers. There are also child care centers around Kathmandu for the private sector, but they are not accessible to lower-income groups.
Article 24 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child states that breast-feeding is indispensable for the optimal development of a child and, therefore, should be practiced. Article 11 of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women classifies the deduction of salary or termination of employment because of breast-feeding as gender discrimination and, therefore, illegal.
The Nepali government has ratified these conventions, but mothers like Rai report that employers don’t always uphold their provisions.
“There should be time to breast-feed the child during office hours with no deduction in the remuneration,” Rai says.
