Background: Worldwide, over 740 million women make their living in the informal economy and therefore lack formal employment benefits, such as maternity leave, that can improve infant feeding practices. Returning to work is one of the biggest challenges women face to maintaining breastfeeding. This study aimed to explore attitudes and perceptions towards breastfeeding in the informal work environment among male and female informal workers. Methods: The study used a qualitative research design. Purposive and snowball sampling was employed. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted among men and women working in different types of informal jobs, in India and South Africa. Data was analysed using a thematic approach and the framework method. Results: Between March and July 2017, 14 FGDs were conducted in South Africa and nine in India. Most women were knowledgeable about the benefits of breastfeeding and reported initiating breastfeeding. However, pressures of family responsibilities and household financial obligations frequently forced mothers to return to work soon after childbirth. Upon return to work many mothers changed their infant feeding practices, adding breastmilk substitutes like formula milk, buffalo milk, and non-nutritive fluids like Rooibos tea. Some mothers expressed breastmilk to feed the infant while working but many mothers raised concerns about expressed breastmilk becoming 'spoilt'. Breastfeeding in the workplace was challenging as the work environment was described as unsafe and unhygienic for breastfeeding. Mothers also described being unable to complete work tasks while caring for an infant. In contrast, the flexibility of informal work allowed some mothers to successfully balance competing priorities of childcare and work. Sociocultural challenges influenced breastfeeding practices. For example, men in both countries expressed mixed views about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding was perceived as beneficial for both mother and child, however it was culturally unacceptable for women to breastfeed in public. This affected working mothers' ability to breastfeed outside the home and contributed to a lack of respect for women who chose to breastfeed in the workplace.
Pricing is one of the most powerful mechanisms platform firms use to internally regulate demand and supply, withstand competitors and achieve profitability (Rochet & Triole, 2003). This article uncovers the effects that platform pricing logics have on existing labour markets within the city of Bengaluru. For this article the platform serves as the object of study, i.e. in determining earnings for service providers for various purposes (like subsidising products by (mis)matching service price and earnings) and it serves as a means to enter the service labour market as it exists in the city. This article looks at how platform service fees, with the particular set of logics of the two-sided markets and intra-capitalist competition, impact adjacent enterprises (informal, own account enterprises) providing the same services. Carpentry, electrical work and plumbing are services with a long history in the city and their breadth of service was not created as a result of the platform (compared to food delivery, for example). Rarely do minimum wage floors factor into the service fee negotiation between providers and clients. The platforms' market does have that impact, creating a standard around their base fee, undercutting the more tacit ways in which workers negotiate their service fees. This article uses ethnographic data from interviews with people working on Urban Company and Housejoy platforms in carpentry, electrical work and plumbing, collected in Bengaluru in 2017-18.
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