Lactation at Work
Expressed Milk, Expressing Beliefs, and the Expressive Value of Law

Two waves of interviews with management and workers demonstrate how the Lactation at Work Law made substantial changes within organizations.

Elizabeth A. Hoffmann (Author)

9781108726498, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 September 2022

256 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.351 kg

In recent decades, as women entered the US workforce in increasing numbers, they faced the conundrum of how to maintain breastfeeding and hold down full-time jobs. In 2010, the Lactation at Work Law (an amendment to the US Fair Labor Standards Act) mandated accommodations for lactating women. This book examines the federal law and its state-level equivalent in Indiana, drawing on two waves of interviews with human resource personnel, supervising managers, and lactating workers. In many ways, this simple law - requiring break time and privacy for pumping - is a success story. Through advocacy by allies, education of managers, and employee initiative, many organizations created compliant accommodations. This book shows legal scholars how a successful civil rights law creates effective change; helps labor activists and management personnel understand how to approach new accommodations; and enables workers to understand the possibilities for amelioration of workplace problems through internal negotiations and legal reforms.

1. Introduction
2. Lactation law as public policy
3. Expressed frustration: noncompliant, insufficient, and inconsistent accommodations
4. Milk and management: substantive compliance through managerialization
5. Allies already: supportive human resource specialists and supervising managers
6. Moralizing the law: listening in the shadow of the law and the transformation of supervising managers
7. Conclusion
Appendix A. State and federal lactation at work laws
Appendix B. Methodology and research strategy.

Subject Areas: Law: study & revision guides [LR], Employment & labour law [LNH], Legal system: general [LNA], Laws of Specific jurisdictions [LN], Social theory [JHBA], Sociology [JHB], Popular beliefs & controversial knowledge [JFH], Society & social sciences [J]