"Is it just so my right?" Women repossessing breastfeeding

Infant feeding occurs in the context of continued gender inequities and in the context of a feminist movement that left women vulnerable to a system that defined the male body and mind as the norm. This paper draws from a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with women artists at the 2005 Mamapalooza music festival in New York City, and conference participants at the 2005 La Leche League International and International Lactation Consultant Association Conferences and at the 2007 Reproductive Freedom Conference to understand our collective alienation from breastfeeding and to outline a process for how we might repossess breastfeeding as a positive function in women's lives. These women find power in honoring and validating their own experiences, in claiming those experiences as legitimate feminist actions, and then drawing on these experiences to seek new meanings, customs and norms that similarly honor, value and support their rights to those experiences. They argue that we need a feminist movement that fully incorporates women's needs as biological and reproductive social beings, alongside their needs as productive beings, and a movement that defines the female body and mind as the norm

Women’s status, breastfeeding support, and breastfeeding practices in the United States

The objective of this study is to examine associations between state-level breastfeeding support and breastfeeding practices, controlling for women’s status, in the U.S. We used publicly available data on state-level breastfeeding practices and support (international board-certified lactation consultants (IBCLC), births in Baby-Friendly hospitals, and La Leche League Leaders) for births in 2015 from the CDC Breastfeeding Report Card (2018) and other CDC reported data, and indicators of women’s status from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports (2015). We conducted an ecological study to estimate incidence rate ratios of exclusive breastfeeding at six months and breastfeeding at 12 months with breastfeeding supports using bivariate and multivariable Poisson regression. Political participation, poverty, and employment and earnings were associated with breastfeeding practices, as was each breastfeeding support in bivariate analyses. After controlling for women’s status, only IBCLCs were positively associated with rates of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months and continued breastfeeding at 12 months. For every additional IBCLC per 1000 live births, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months increased by 5 percent (95% CI 1.03, 1.07) and the rate of breastfeeding at 12 months increased by 4 percent (95% CI 1.02, 1.06). Political participation, poverty, and employment and earnings were associated with breastfeeding practices, indicating a relationship between women’s political and economic status and their breastfeeding practices in the U.S. Given the influence of women’s status, increasing the number of IBCLCs may improve breastfeeding practices

Intimate partner aggression: what have we learned? Commentary of Archer’s meta-Analysis.

Archer's work (2000) is a meta-analysis of the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus, 1979) that provides a summary of what has been learned from applications of this instrument, especially with adolescents and young adults in dating rather than long-term relationships. He concluded that more women than men self-report physical aggression toward a partner, although a higher proportion of those injured and receiving medical attention are women. A meta-analysis can be viewed as comprising three stages: primary—the level of the original data in the component studies, secondary—the formal meta-analysis, and tertiary—the level of interpretation of the results. Although the author is not responsible for the flaws in the available studies, he must frame the conclusions within the constraints identified in the primary data because nothing in meta-analysis neutralizes them. We conclude that Archer's work falls short at all three stages. This commentary outlines our concerns regarding (a) the two conflicting viewpoints about intimate partner violence that ground the work; (b) the conceptualization and operational definitions of the constructs of aggression, violence, physical assault, and harm assessment; (c) fundamental and common methodological limitations of the studies included in the meta-analysis that should have tempered interpretation of the findings; and (d) issues of generalizability of the results. We conclude by elaborating a broader context supporting the gendered nature of intimate violence within which the research questions could be profitably studied

Improving the Health of Working Women: Aligning Workplan Structures to Reflect the Value of Women's Labor

The lack of societal response to the needs of working women, especially mothers, has resulted in systematic gender-based inequities in labor force opportunities, salary, and benefits that negatively impact the physical, psychological, social, and financial well-being of women and their families. Since women now comprise 45% of the total US labor force, and economists are predicting both an aging and shrinking labor force through 2050,1 reducing the workplace-workforce mismatch through polices and programs that better meet the needs of women workers makes sense from both health and economic perspectives. This paper outlines policies in several areas that could help reduce this mismatch and improve women’s health, including policies on health insurance, pay equity, paid sick leave, family leave, workplace breastfeeding support, sexual harassment, and healthy work environment. A 2003 national conference on “Workplace-Workforce Mismatch: Work, Family, Health and Wellbeing,” sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, concluded that “it is evident that a structural workplace/workforce mismatch exists in which the workplace itself no longer fits the needs of increasing numbers of workers.”2 The force behind this mismatch is the feminization of the labor force and the lack of societal response to the needs of working mothers who continue to carry primary responsibility for both childcare and domestic work. Today, 45% of the American workforce is female, and over 75% of women ages 25-54 are employed. From 1975 to 2001 the participation of mothers in the labor force has risen from 54% to 73%

Breastfeeding and Gender Inequality

Many feminists have argued breastfeeding is a constraint that may prevent women from realizing nonmaternal opportunities. This article presents an alternative feminist perspective, arguing that the view of breastfeeding as a constraint glosses over the mediating role that gender inequality plays in the way breastfeeding impacts women's lives. Rather than focus on breastfeeding as a constraint, attention should be focused on the ways that socially created policies and practices, often based on a gender-similarity framework, sustain gender inequities. Policies and practices based on this framework negate the needs of the body, which exaggerates gender differences, redistributes gender inequities, and raise the costs of breastfeeding. In contrast, locating the constraint in the arena of gender inequality better explains how social decisions that differentially accommodate men's nonlactating bodies privilege men over women and help us recognize how passage of polices that accommodate lactating bodies represents progress toward equal opportunity

Social Experiences of Breastfeeding [book review]

The three editors are well-established researchers and policy advocates for breastfeeding in the United Kingdom. The book is based on a two-year, six-session seminar series, convened by these editors, highlighting research, practice, and policy in breastfeeding, with a focus on the United Kingdom. The 19 contributors were all presenters at this seminar series; collectively they represent an interdisciplinary group whose perspectives offer the reader differing but complementary perspectives highlighting the relationships between research, practice, and policy in breastfeeding

Beyond the measurement trap: a reconstructed conceptualization and measurement of battering.

Many areas of women's health, including battering, suffer from conceptual and methodological deficits. This article uses the "measurement trap" (Graham & Campbell, 1991), a set of conditions defined by lack of information resulting from a narrow conceptualization of the problem, poor existing data sources, inappropriate outcome indicators, and limited measurement techniques, as a framework for describing how current approaches to conceptualizing and measuring battering hamper research and program efforts in the field of domestic violence. We then describe an alternative conceptualization-and-measurement approach that is based on battered women's experiences. We argue that an experiential approach, which grounds measurement in women's lived experiences, improves our ability to conduct research that correctly identifies, monitors, and explains the epidemiology of this phenomenon and provides a solid basis for policy and program development

Prevalence and distinctiveness of battering, physical assault and sexual assault in a population-based sample.

The types of violence subsumed under the term intimate partner violence include physical assault, sexual assault, psychological abuse, and battering. This study is the first to estimate the prevalence of intimate partner violence by type (battering, physical assaults, and sexual assaults) in a population-based sample of women aged 18 to 45. The authors describe the prevalence of partner violence by type as well as the demographic, health behavior, and health status correlates of intimate partner violence by type. Findings support the empirical distinction of battering and assault. Battering as measured by the Women’s Experiences With Battering (WEB) Scale provided the most comprehensive measure of intimate partner violence

Physical health consequences of physical and psychological intimate partner violence

Background: Past studies that have addressed the health effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) have defined IPV as violence based on physical blows that frequently cause injuries. To our knowledge, no epidemiologic research has assessed the physical health consequences of psychological forms of IPV. Objective: To estimate IPV prevalence by type and associated physical health consequences among women seeking primary health care. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting and Participants: A total of 1152 women, aged 18 to 65 years, recruited from family practice clinics from February 1997 through January 1999 and screened for IPV during a brief in-clinic interview; health history and current status were assessed in a follow-up interview. Results: Of 1152 women surveyed, 53.6% ever experienced any type of partner violence; 13.6% experienced psychological IPV without physical IPV. Women experiencing psychological IPV were significantly more likely to report poor physical and mental health (adjusted relative risk [RR], 1.69 for physical health and 1.74 for mental health). Psychological IPV was associated with a number of adverse health outcomes, including a disability preventing work (adjusted RR, 1.49), arthritis (adjusted RR, 1.67), chronic pain (adjusted RR, 1.91), migraine (adjusted RR, 1.54) and other frequent headaches (adjusted RR, 1.41), stammering (adjusted RR, 2.31), sexually transmitted infections (adjusted RR, 1.82), chronic pelvic pain (adjusted RR, 1.62), stomach ulcers (adjusted RR, 1.72), spastic colon (adjusted RR, 3.62), and frequent indigestion, diarrhea, or constipation (adjusted RR, 1.30). Psychological IPV was as strongly associated with the majority of adverse health outcomes as was physical IPV. Conclusions: Psychological IPV has significant physical health consequences. To reduce the range of health consequences associated with IPV, clinicians should screen for psychological forms of IPV as well as physical and sexual IPV

No safe haven: male violence against women at home, at work, and in the community [book review]

No Safe Haven is the excellent final product of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Male Violence Against Women. Spearheaded by a renowned group of scientists, the Task Force was charged, in 1991, with reviewing current research on the prevalence, causes and impact of violence against women at home (intimate violence), at work (sexual harassment) and in the community (rape/sexual assault), and to recommend clinical and community-based interventions, legal changes and policy initiatives to address the violence. The task force and the book are designed to inspire health professionals to address the crisis of violence against women and to provide new insights into the problem