Chelsea Clinton has called for more support for women who are breastfeeding.
The mum-of-two has opened up about her own experiences in an essay on
Well and Good.
In the piece she explains how planning her breastfeeding schedule took up a lot of time when she went back to work after maternity leave.
“I’ve… breastfed just about everywhere you could imagine and I’ve pumped in countless airport bathrooms, Amtrak train bathrooms, in quasi-public areas with my husband standing guard, and outdoors hidden behind a building when there were no other options,” she writes.
“Sometimes I mistimed feeding or pumping and I could feel the milk leak out and soak the pads in my bra—and yes, I was lucky because I could afford disposable pads so I could at least know the leakage wouldn’t be visible as I was standing on a stage, sitting in a meeting, giving an interview.”
Chelsea, who works at the Clinton Foundation and is a lecturer at Columbia University in New York, also highlights the “stigma” around periods in her essay.
“Remember how awkward you felt in school each time you carried a tampon or pad to the bathroom? Did you haul your whole backpack into the stall with you, like I did? For many girls and women around the world, there are no safe, sanitary stalls to use, and no pads or tampons.”
She called on governments to stop taxing sanitary products as ‘luxury items’ and for an end to the shame around periods and breastfeeding, calling them “some of the least discussed yet most pervasive barriers to women’s equality.”
