Every minute of every day, a woman dies needlessly in pregnancy or childbirth. With nearly 60 per cent of the world’s women of childbearing age in the labour force in 2006, the importance of paid work in the lives of so many women makes maternity protection at work a key to safeguarding the health and economic security of women and their children. A new ILO report to be presented at an international conference in London on 18 October reviews the progress and priorities in the world of work to ensure women’s rights to safe maternity.
Salissa works as a market gardener in Loumbila, a small village on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.
She has recently had a second child. Just ten days after giving birth, she was already back to work, doing ten hours of gardening a day to be able to feed her family.
“In many developing countries, maternity leave is a luxury enjoyed only by a small minority of salaried women covered by social security. Poverty compels many women in poor countries to work up to their due date and to return immediately after childbirth, at the risk of their health and that of their child”, explains Naomi Cassirer, the author of the new ILO report on Safe Maternity and the World of Work.
See full Press Release.
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