Aproximación a la Lactancia Materna entre las Estudiantes y Trabajadoras Universitarias en el Distrito Metropolitano de Quito Fase Ii

General objective Collect quantitative and qualitative information on the situation of breastfeeding among students and workers of the Catholic, National Polytechnic and Salesian universities Justification The female population in universities is high. According to figures from INEN (2010), women make up 74.5% of the population in private higher education institutes and 25.5% in public ones. There are no figures on the number of women mothers or women who are pregnant or breastfeeding in universities, which shows that despite the fact that women are the majority, the issue of motherhood is totally invisible. This is already a problem since, in the absence of figures on this peculiarity, decisions cannot be made to help working women and students. Motherhood and breastfeeding are two issues that generate a special condition in women since, for social reasons, she is the one called to take care of, feed and raise the children. This means that female university workers and students live in a different condition from that of their male colleagues: they are the ones who must sacrifice their studies, jobs and life time in order to create adequate conditions for their sons and daughters. that many of them abandon their studies or work or that they simply stop breastfeeding, which, in terms of health, means a serious problem since it affects the direct development of the infants and the mother. In addition, stress is generated between mothers and children due to the abrupt separation between them. Despite the fact that these are key problems that are related to student desertion, low grades, malnutrition in infants, etc., as institutions we have responded little to the conditions of breastfeeding and parenting that women go through. If the institutions do not generate appropriate spaces to know and recognize the conditions of their female students and workers, it is also a form of institutionalized violence against mothers. Hence the importance of working on research on this topic on the one hand and, on the other hand, generating a lactation center so that women can breastfeed and find out about their rights.