The 97th session of Women Parliament was held on February 23, 2018 in kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot and discussed the issues of pregnancy and birth in the third millennium.
The 97th session of Women Parliament was held on February 23, 2018 in kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot and discussed the issues of pregnancy and birth in the third millennium.
Greeting were given by:
Yoram Israeli, head of Mateh Asher regional council
Nili Alon, gender advisor for Mateh Asher regional council, host and organizer of the session
Anat Livnat, chairwoman of the gender advisors association and a member of Shin management
Carmit Peleg, Mateh Asher youth center manager
Speakers at the session were:
Dr. Hanna Shapira – gynecologist specializing in genetics.
Suheila Ghanem – senior midwife, psychotherapist and instructing director in Ziv delivery rooms in Zefat.
Dassi Elad – doula, author of Belly Stories, administrator of Active Birth group on Facebook (15k members) and manager of a women’s clinic.
Sivan Lienhart – leading member of Nashim Kor’ot Laledet association (‘Women giving birth/calling for birth’).
Roni Tene-Cohen – certified midwife, a BOT (birth-oriented therapy) therapist, working in women’s clinics and co-founded the natural birth delivery room in Galilee Medical Center.
Sagit Brami – co-founder of Dear Mom association, supporting women with postpartum or pregnancy depression and mental struggles, working to raise public awareness to this issue.
Ayelet Ori Benita performed live music.
The session brought up tensions between experienced certified professionals and activists wanting to make knowledge more accessible to all women regarding their rights and possibilities during birth. I hope these tensions will not overshadow the relations between both sides, but rather bring progress and serve first and foremost pregnant women before, during and after birth.
The lectures suggest it is a domain of many women wanting to help and support other women, and some of them do it volunteering, often after a painful personal experience. This solidarity of women working for women is very important to highlight, especially considering social perceptions of women as being hostile to one another. Some of the lectures have mentioned a pendulum movement (e.g. going from non-medical births to over-medicalized births and then back to reducing birth medicalization) and I can only hope all pendulums stop in the best possible point for women.
The issue of silence and silencing was noted regarding postpartum depression, but not on other subjects, which are also silenced. We hope to shed light and give a voice to many more subjects related to pregnancy and birth because this is the way to bring change, and as long as we are silenced we are the ones paying the price.