Family-friendly as a double-edged sword

Abstract

Critics of family-friendly policies contend that family-friendly policies should be retooled in support of the struggle to restructure the capitalist labor contract, dismantling the gendered assumptions that underlie the ideal worker as a detached and disembodied individual, unencumbered by external commitments. This paper considers whether accommodations for breast-feeding women who pump their breasts in their place of employment possess such a radical potential. Interviews with a small group of middle class women indicate that, in many cases, these accommodations exacerbate, rather than alleviate, women's double burdens. In addition, this paper shows that rather than challenging capitalist organizational culture and its ideal disembodied worker, women who pump in the workplace reproduce this image. By turning their bodies into a project to be managed, they create a distance between the "woman in the suit" and "the woman in the body", thereby failing to challenge the standard capitalist ethos.
Grounded in women's experiences in "lactation friendly" workplaces, this paper also provides an ethnographic backdrop to a growing body of literature that calls for the development and implementation of lactation-friendly policies.