If your lactation room passed a compliance audit tomorrow, would the women using it say you cared?
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I started writing about working mothers because of a bathroom. Fifteen years ago, I pumped breast milk in one, at a startup tech company where nearly everyone around me was a man, and nobody had thought about where a mother might go. I promised myself no other woman would go back to work without knowing her rights and her options. That promise became 15 years of reporting and advocacy, including designing Mothers’ Rooms.
When Brie Tascione, CMO at MilkMate, told me during an interview that she’d spent two years pumping on a toilet seat, I was immediately brought back to 2011. “It’s the most ambitious women who are the least likely to raise their hand and ask for help,” she told me.
