Category: Women in Action

In this former industrial suburb where residents’ access to healthcare is mostly limited to hospital visits, a new space that is unique in France has opened: one that houses not only gynecologists and psychologists, but also social workers and lawyers.
“Within these walls, there will be no taboos,” promised Dr. Ghada Hatem on the day of the centre’s inauguration. Physical violence, rape, incest, excision… In the safety of this smart and brightly coloured refuge, every kind of suffering has been recounted. “It was impossible for us to just pretend there was nothing to see!” the gynecologist and obstetrician who founded this unique centre recalled. A short distance from the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis, in a garden that’s still overgrown, the Maison des femmes (Women’s House) opened its doors in the summer of 2016.
For quite some time, there have hardly been any gynecologists left in Saint-Denis, and doctors are rare, so residents’ access to healthcare is mostly limited to hospital visits. Some 4,700 women, of 120 different nationalities, give birth there each year. More than 200 of these women leave, baby in tow, with no contacts – other than the emergency number 115 – that can offer them help finding a roof for shelter. Some of these women never saw a doctor during their pregnancy. The majority of them don’t have any social insurance cover upon their first visit. “Their main worry is where they are going to sleep that same night, and what they are going to eat,” Dr. Hatem explained. “So they hardly feel concerned by cervical smear tests, or mammograms…” The hospital’s family planning department; three small offices at the end of a corridor, squeezed into the maternity unit, was not up to the task of dealing with the growing problems of sexual violence, and female genital mutilation. “In the last two years the department has recorded a 21 percent rise in the number of abortions carried out, and a 50 percent increase in consultations, according to the hospital. In addition to which the department deals with 35 impromptu visits per day, from persons requesting advice on various subjects.”
“I ‘have a dream’ too”
Gynecologists, sexologists, surgeons, psychologists, midwives, relationship counselors, social workers, lawyers and since a year ago, police chiefs, a psychiatrist, a psychomotricity specialist and a relaxation therapist; without counting the twenty-two volunteers – ranging from medical to administrative staff – are currently available to support the Maison des femmes’ patients. The Malian singer Inna Modja is the centre’s ‘godmother’, and she leads a discussion group for women who have undergone excision. Like 15 percent of the patients on the Delafontaine maternity ward, Modja was cut; at the age of four-and-a-half. “I’ve succeeded in taking away from this extremely negative experience the will to accomplish things and to be my own woman,” the singer confided. Modja has since been “restored”. “Here the women are welcomed as they would be in their own home. Knowing that some of us have lived through similar experiences helps give the women confidence and build up trust! Perhaps sometimes I will pick up my guitar and play for them, to bring them comfort.”

“Deprived and vulnerable women will find comfort and support in the warmth of this house”

Women who come to the Maison des femmes can participate in beauty workshops, relaxation sessions, art therapy classes or even learn to read and write. “Whatever they like, as long the activities don’t focus exclusively on their ‘mother-status’!”, relationship and family counselor Monique Veneri explained. “Here, it’s about taking care of oneself.” Hanging on the wall, there’s a poem by Dr. Hatem: “I ‘have a dream’ too”. “I dreamed that women – who are at once half the sky, the future of humanity and the salt of the earth, if we believe what the poets write – had become human beings, free, equal and living in solidarity with each other,” she wrote.
Aftercare for victims of trauma
There are days when Veneri would love to be offering couples therapy, as she did in her former job at a clinic in Toulouse that she left. Here, “the majority of consultations concern marital rape and abortion. And we see so many minors who have been victims of rape.” Indeed, that afternoon the whole Maison des femmes team was called to the assistance of a 17-year-old girl who had just arrived. Pregnant, she had been raped, after having been drugged by a stranger that she had “stupidly followed”. “When I woke up, in his bed, he held me by the wrists and threatened me, saying, “What am I going to do with you now?”, she recounted, still terrorised. “I thought he was going to kill me. So I swore I wouldn’t say anything.” Tell her parents? Have an abortion? Report the rape to the police? “We hate to make a decision on the woman’s behalf,” Mathilde Delespine, midwife and coordinator at the Maison emphasised. “But the law says that if we know of sexual abuse perpetrated against a minor, we have to report it.” While the relationship counselor is trying to reassure the teenage girl, the midwife consults the juvenile squad. A simple statement, without an accusation, will be sufficient to allow the police to examine the DNA of the fetus after the abortion. As for the young victim, “We’re going to organise her post-trauma care and follow-up”, the Maison des femmes’ coordinator assures us. “In the eyes of this man, she was a mere object. Our goal is to ensure that she feels like the protagonist in her own life as a woman again.”

By Musimbi Kanyoro, President and CEO, Global Fund for Women
In today’s world, women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are being attacked and rolled back by those in positions of power. Take the Mexico City Policy, or Global Gag Rule, for instance, which has been expanded by the U.S. administration. It cuts off billions of dollars in funding for critical health services around the world like access to contraception or STD screenings.

However, women have never been known to sit and wait for change to happen. And while rollbacks threaten women’s health and rights each day, grassroots women’s groups and movements around the world are working to ensure that women and girls not only have access to critical health services that they need in their own communities, but understand their bodies, are aware of their rights and how to access them, and are safe from violence and discrimination.

Every day, in my work as President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, I’m inspired by the people I meet. As I travel and meet women and girls in Bangladesh or Colombia or San Francisco, I feel hopeful for the future. I’m inspired by their new ideas, their unabashed activism, their willingness to take risks and think outside of the box, and their unwavering commitment to drive meaningful social change.
Global Fund for Women’s grantee partners around the world are leading the charge to not only push back against rollbacks to women’s rights, but push forward creative and resilient solutions to help us get to the world we want.

These grassroots women’s groups are bringing lasting change, shifting gender norms, fighting for better laws and policies, and empowering women and girls to realise their rights and become leaders.
In August, Chile’s women’s movement led the charge to achieve a small legal win in their decades-long fight for abortion rights: the Constitutional Tribunal voted to legalise abortion under three circumstances, easing the country’s total ban on abortion and restoring a right women lost nearly three decades ago under military dictatorship.
Today, we are in a critical moment and I believe that what we do—or do not do—at this time for and with the world’s women and girls has enormous potential.

So, what can we do together to help women’s groups and movements resist rollbacks and fill gaps in sexual health and reproductive rights?
First, we need to let women’s groups and movements lead. The importance of listening to women and girls and trusting them to know what is needed in their own communities remains a core principle at the heart of Global Fund for Women’s mission. And I believe the world would be a better place if we listened to women and girls more, and trusted their ideas.

Second, nothing yields greater benefit than putting financial resources directly into the hands of women. We need to get more funding to grassroots women’s groups and movements around the world so that they can continue to build upon their critical work.

Third, we all need to be advocates for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world. Speak out against damaging policies around the world like the Global Gag Rule, and amplify the voices of women who are leading change in their communities and globally—like women leaders in Chile. Share information about how women’s movements are driving change on health and rights. Demand better policies for women from your own governments and political representatives.

We all have a role to play, and there has never been a better time to join the movement for women’s health and human rights. Together, let’s work toward the world we all want: where every woman and girl is strong, safe, powerful, and heard—no exceptions.

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Doctor Wildhaber is a leading expert in liver transplants for children.

by Caroline Zuercher for Tribune de Genève

“Sometimes, when I’m operating, I say to myself, ‘but why do I do this?’”, Barbara Wildhaber laughs, as she often does during our meeting. The truth is that the paediatric surgeon doesn’t regret her choice. Each operation she carries out is highly pressurised, but there are benefits. “As soon as I’ve finished an operation, I know that it’s what I want to be doing. The combination of technique, the meticulous nature of operations—where everything is on a bonsaï scale—and then the relationships with parents and the children… It fascinates me.”

Barbara Wildhaber greets us at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) in Switzerland, in an extremely well-ordered office: “it helps keep my thoughts clear”, she says. Co-director of the Swiss Center for Liver Diseases in Children located within Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), director of the Romand University Center for Paediatric Surgery, member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the board tasked with deciding on the distribution of highly specialised medicine between Swiss hospitals… Dr. Wildhaber, who has adopted Geneva as her home, has recently added a chair at the Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to her extensive list of posts. This 48-year-old woman from the Aargau canton of Switzerland. She is the only specialist in the country who performs transplants on the youngest babies, which means she can’t leave Switzerland for very long. She has a profound passion for the liver, listing its functions, its capacity to regenerate itself, even if half of it is removed… “Within our bodies, everything revolves around the liver.” Not to mention that it’s also “sensual, beautiful and pleasing to the touch”, and that of all transplants, those of the liver offer the best long-term survival rate.

Dr. Wildhaber rose to prominence in 2015 after directing an operation to separate conjoined twins whose livers were fused. This world-first was carried out at the Inselspital in Bern, on prematurely born twin sisters, who weighed just 1.2 kg each. “We worked as a team of several surgeons. In such an operation, the surgeons are only one element, an important element, but there are others that are also important. And we support each other, because often our doubts start to creep in at different stages.” For Dr. Wildhaber, the technical feat wasn’t the most significant. “It was a very emotional experience. We’re not used to seeing two hearts beat within the same chest. It was beautiful.” It’s a moment marked in her memory, where the best recollections are mixed in with the worst. Sadly, one of the twins died of heart failure aged just a few months. She hasn’t forgotten a single one of the deaths. How does she manage the stress? “By sharing!” A reminder of the importance of the team, once again. “We can’t achieve much alone, and this is particularly true in specialised medicine”, she says, before going on to mention Valérie McLin, with whom she co-directs the Swiss Center for Liver Diseases in Children. “She takes care of the medical follow-up. She’s my brain.”

Tiredness, strong emotions: the aftermath of an operation can be overwhelming. At times Dr. Wildhaber has cried with exhaustion the day after performing a transplant. Her formula for keeping up her energy levels being in nature and practising sport. As a teenager, she competed in sprinting events at national level. Since then, she’s set out on her path of professional advancement with a stopwatch in hand.

Dr. Wildhaber maintains that she never had a pre-determined career plan. Opportunities played a key role. “For a long time I was lucky in the sense that I didn’t have to fight to get where I was.” Things became more complicated as she climbed higher up the hierarchy. “When you reach a certain position, you become the subject of attacks.” Does being a woman complicate the situation? “Five years ago, I would have said no. Since then I’ve realised that, instead of countering a woman by putting forward arguments, certain men start to act macho. If a man is insistent, it is said that he has character. If a woman behaves the same way, she’s considered bad-tempered.” Barbara Wildhaber, for her part, is described as pleasant and approachable. In her department, the atmosphere is good-natured and friendly. But it didn’t get to be that way by chance. She also has an “iron hand in a velvet glove”, according to Dominique Belli, Head of the Pediatrics Department. “I’m very willing to listen and I take note of the opinion of my team before making a decision”, she explained. “But once a decision has been taken, we have to go ahead with it. It’s the pragmatic; maybe even a bit surgical, side to me.”

The surgeon has learned patience. It’s essential to take time with patients. Even if it’s only taking a moment to undo the poppers of an item of clothing for them. These children are a “driving force” for her. At times funny, sad, aggressive… “Their emotions are pure. It’s thanks to them that I keep my feet on the ground. And their vulnerability softens me.”

Barbara Wildhaber is excited about joining the Assembly of the ICRC. Humanitarian paediatric surgery constitutes another one of her multiple lives. Like many doctors, she has carried out missions abroad. She would now like to set up permanent surgery services in developing countries, by training and monitoring people in the field.

Such networks have already been partially put in place in Kenya and Cameroon. “In Switzerland, we have quality surgery and it’s a great luxury. I would like to give access to the most basic operations to others. I couldn’t live without this counterweight.” Nor without the children. “Six weeks ago, we performed a transplant on a baby who weighed five kilos”, she recalls, hovering on the doorstep on her way out. “I saw her again yesterday, she’s now six months old and she smiled at me with her puffy cheeks. All the rest pales in comparison.”

By Idrissa SANE for Le Soleil, Dakar

The practice of excision is on the decline in Senegal, thanks to the mobilisation of victims and NGOs
In Senegal, the law that penalises excision doesn’t hold the weight it could hold, as local customs continue to exert a strong influence. Ethnic groups in south-eastern Senegal, in Kolda, haven’t yet abandoned this practice, which they consider a means of preserving the virginity of a girl, the honour of her family and that of the community. However, attitudes are slowly changing thanks to action taken by victims and by civil society.

It may be siesta time, but there’s no rest for the girls of Bantaguel district in Kolda, South East Senegal. On this Wednesday in March at 3pm these young girls – one after another – are converging towards the home of Oumou Barry, former president of the local girls’ club. The courtyard of her home is their headquarters. “We can say that instances of genital mutilation have declined.

These young girls’ clubs have contributed. It’s not easy to convince the adults, who are attached to our ancestral practices,” confides Barry. The law doesn’t carry much weight compared to the strength of tradition. Certain ethnic groups have sanctified virginity. They practise excision because they consider it a way to preserve the virginity of their daughters, to honour the reputation of families and that of the community. For these communities, excision inhibits pre-nuptial sexual desire.

“Our parents aren’t well enough informed. They think that excision enables a girl to abstain from sexual relations until her marriage. Other families carry out what they call “closure” which is reversed on the day that the girl leaves her family to join her husband.

In our area, families are worried about the possibility of their daughters getting pregnant before marriage or losing their virginity”, Oumou Awa Baldé explained. Furthermore, communities believe that excision purifies a girl or woman. Within her entourage, a girl or woman who has been excised is more respected than one who hasn’t undergone this operation.

Gaining ground
At the offices of the NGO Tostan, located in the Nord Foire district of Dakar, the staff are not quite declaring victory yet, even after 20 years of awareness raising on the ground. On this Monday 28th August 2017, the founder and executive director of Tostan, American national Molly Melching radiates enthusiasm and passion for her work. “I want to make it clear, first of all, that it’s the communities themselves that are deciding to give up the practice of excision.

Tostan is only active in informing communities, and raising their awareness on human rights in a general way,” Melching maintained. The practice persists but attitudes are slowly changing. In Senegal, the time when those who spoke out about excision were vilified is now in the past. “We know that we haven’t got a 100 percent discontinuation rate in the villages that have decided to turn their backs on this practice. But we have reached a real rate of around 70 percent abandonment,” Melching said.

The biggest gain for the movement has been religious leaders getting involved in awareness raising. Excision is of course not without its consequences on the health of those who undergo the procedure. “We have had cases of girls who have died from haemorrhages due to excision. Some women who were excised as girls suffer from difficulties when giving birth. Others are left with traumatism over the long term,” Tostan’s Senior Programme Manager Penda Mbaye explained.

These educators know very well that there is still a long road ahead. According to a 2016 annual report by the joint UNFPA-UNICEF Programme on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), today in the south of Senegal—which has the highest rate of excision when girls and women of all ages are considered—the prevalence of excision is at 47 percent among young girls, down from 77 percent among the age group above them a few years ago.

In the north of the country, the prevalence of excision stands at 31 percent among young women aged 15 and above, and 22 percent among girls under 15 years. For Monitoring and Evaluation Manager Mady Cissé, the challenge is to enhance methods used to evaluate the abandonment of this practice within communities.

Sex trafficking has become endemic in this south-eastern Nigerian state of Edo, in spite of international and national efforts to stop it. Determined to turn things around, the governor is now trying a “home-grown solution.”

By Osagie Otabor for The Nation

Edo, one of Nigeria’s 36 states, has practically become synonymous with sex trafficking. Last August, Edo state governor Godwin Obaseki said he had had enough. He announced that the appointment of a high-level task force to find solutions to this scourge.

It’s an old and intractable problem rooting back to the 1980s. At the time, Edo women would travel to Italy to pursue commercial opportunities, but when things went badly, some resorted to prostitution. A few even went on to become madams.

Since then, a number of international instruments have been adopted to fight trafficking, notably the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (UNTP). Nigeria signed the agreement in 2000 and has passed its own anti-trafficking legislation, which sets forth clear penalties for the trafficking of human beings. Edo state too has adopted laws to stem this practice, and NGOs have been working to help victims for nearly two decades.

Yet none of this helped Naomi Otoijuamu, whose elder brother was involed in trafficking her to Russia. “The humiliation was much in Russia. My mum used to call me often to find out how I was coping. I told her I wanted to come home, but she insisted I pay back the money used to traffick me first. I paid about US$23,000 to the trafficker, and I fell sick immediately. In a day, I slept with about 17 men on average. I have been very sick since I came back. I stayed in Russia for four years.”

There are thousands of Noami Otoijuamus. Numerous studies have been written to elucidate the difficulties of solving this problem, with poverty being labelled as the leading cause. But these reports identify many other factors as well, all of which reinforce one another.

Among the most-cited culprits are lack of education, which makes young girls more susceptible to being tricked by false promises of easy money, and cultural biases against women and girls, which contribute to gender-based poverty and a willingness to do anything to break out of it. Corruption is also fingered for contributing to poverty in this resource-rich nation and for making it easy for traffickers to avoid prosecution. Families are often complicit, as they see this as their only way out of poverty. Then there are traditional practices such as Juju, or voodoo, which are often used to frighten victims into silence, making it hard to prosecute their traffickers.

Governor Obaseki has decided to attack the problem. His new Edo State Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force has been charged with finding “home-grown solutions.” It is made up of representatives of government ministries, departments and agencies; security agencies; NGOs; the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP); and religious and traditional institutions.

Obaseki challenged the task force to come up with new ways to enforce the federal government’s trafficking laws within the state and to draw up a comprehensive action plan to help reintegrate victims of the illicit trade back into society. This could include training—as well as potential victims who might be lured by promises of greener pastures—in various trades, and then providing graduates with grants to help them start their businesses.

Clamping down on offenders is also part of his plan. “It has been suggested that a special court be established in the state to prosecute perpetrators,” the governor said. “We are losing our young people to this negative trend, and we must make human trafficking a thing of the past in the state.”
In a recent visit to Edo, Denmark’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Torben Getterman, said her government supports Governor Obaseki’s initiatives. Denmark has witnessed a spike in human trafficking from Nigeria, and the Ambassador pledged her country’s readiness to collaborate with the state government in tackling this issue.

Meanwhile, valiant NGOs will continue to wage their uphill battle. Idia Renaissance, Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), and the Initiative for Youth Awareness on Migration, Immigration, Development and Reintegration (IYAMIDR) all work to deter human trafficking and to help victims reintegrate society.
The most well known is Idia Renaissance, founded in 1999 by Eki Igbinedion, who was then the First Lady of Edo State. She has rehabilitated hundreds of trafficked victims and helped potential victims, setting up a centre where they are trained in new skills. Some four to five hundred candidates now receive certificates and diplomas every year, and Idia Renaissance has begun extending microcredits to graduates interested in starting small businesses.

The fact that Igbinedion has met with so much resistance is indicative of just how daunting the challenges will be for the governor’s new task force. She has frequently been the target of hostility on the part of victims and their families, who initially see her as depriving them of an opportunity to make a lot of money abroad, even when they know full well what doing so entails.
Yet Igbinedion doggedly persists, giving at least some young Edo women a livelihood—and a newfound sense of dignity.

Following her illness, Cécile Pasquinelli created the brand Garance for patients who’ve had a mastectomy.
by Caroline de Malet, Le Figaro (France)

The model in the poster is gorgeous, and so is her lingerie. Nothing would give away the fact that the bra was made to measure for a woman who had been operated on to treat breast cancer. This is the true story behind lingerie and swimwear brand Garance, which offers women who’ve had a mastectomy a glamourous range of garments to pick from.

It may seem trivial to some, yet those who have been in this situation know that it’s far from being the case. “After this type of operation, you need a whole new wardrobe and to make an appointment with someone in a white coat on the orthopedic department, who fits you out with clothing that’s adapted to wear with a prosthesis,” Cécile Pasquinelli Vu-Hong, the brand’s founder said.

She still has bad memories of what felt like an assault course, an experience that in her eyes constantly reminds the patient of her illness, at the exact moment when she’s trying to move on and rebuild herself. The types of medical garment offered on the conventional route she found austere and outdated—and not especially feminine.

70 percent of women who undergo a mastectomy wear a breast prosthesis
30 percent of the 50,000 women in France who are diagnosed with breast cancer each year undergo a partial or complete removal of one or both breasts (mastectomy) and 70 percent of these women do not go on to have surgical reconstruction, meaning that in France, 300,000 women wear breast prostheses.

“After having cancer seven years ago, I wanted to be able to buy my underwear where I wanted,” the elegant Pasquinelli revealed. “I was on sickness leave for two years, so I had some free time and, having worked as an executive in marketing for 17 years, I came up with the idea of launching my own line of lingerie,” the founder explained. The products are designed to be not only comfortable (without underwiring to avoid discomfort), and to cover a bit more than average (to hide scars), but above all to be more fashionable than existing models currently on the market.

Keen buyers of the brand have no doubts about the products, like Fabienne P., who wrote on Facebook: “It’s thanks to Garance that I feel like I’m myself again, the person I was before cancer… Your brand has helped me to rediscover that pleasure, as well as the desire to be seductive for my boyfriend again. It’s vital for getting one’s self-esteem back. Thank you for giving me a second chance to be me again.”

Boosted by major retailers, like French chain Monoprix
It took Pasquinelli two years to set up her business. Unlike competitors, she wasn’t satisfied with the idea of her products only being sold in medical outlets (at orthopedic centers, hospitals and in pharmacies)—she also won over major retailers, like top-ranked French e-commerce and mail order company La Redoute, or the famous Galeries Lafayette. All the while making sales via her own website, which enabled her to establish the brand’s look, identity and values. Today the majority of her sales are made through the website. Since September, seven big Monoprix stores—located near cancer support centres both in Paris and outside the capital—have been selling the range, which has given the brand stronger publicity and has boosted the company’s turnover.

Having used her own funds to start out in 2012, Pasquinelli—who won the ‘Pink Prize for Female Entrepreneur’ by specialist women’s cancer magazine Rose in the same year—joined the ESSEC Business School’s Antropia social incubator programme before launching her first funding round in July 2015. With the support of ethical investor Garrigue, the start-up, which received accreditation as a social and solidarity economy enterprise in 2016, raised a further 200,000 euros (US$ 235,000) via the crowdfunding platform 1001pact.com (recently renamed Lita.co) which is dedicated to financing projects with a strong social and environmental impact.

Collaboration with high-profile French designer Stella Cadente
The founder of Garance has been able to count on the support of willing volunteers since an early stage: fashion designer Stella Cadente, who Pasquinelli met while she was presiding over the jury of a fashion design competition organised by Galeries Lafayette and Garance, and then there’s Valérie, a former patient, who described posing for the brand as an “obvious choice”. Currently Garance has two employees and works with three external suppliers.

Thanks to Monoprix, the company’s sales, which had been growing by 20 percent per year on average, have almost doubled in 2017 compared to 2016. “If an additional five Monoprix stores decide to stock the brand at the end of the year and if we continue to develop with the chain in 2018, then next year we will step up to a higher level of expansion by going international”, Pasquinelli said. The company, which has launched an English language version of its website, has already established contact with distributors in Russia, Canada and the United States. Seven years after her cancer diagnosis, Cécile Pasquinelli Vu-Hong’s mantra hasn’t changed: keep moving forward, keep aiming higher.

https://www.garance-paris.com/