Sexual violence is a human rights issue and a women's health issue. Without adequate research-based knowledge, neither health services nor the justice system can offer victims the help they need.
“Norwegian women are perhaps not as modern and liberated today as we like to think,” says researcher Camilla Mørk Røstvik. She has examined how women – and some men – describe their experiences with menstruation in the twentieth century.
On 8 August, a proposal to legalise elective abortion was debated and rejected in Argentina’s highest legislative body. Despite the decision, Argentina has shown itself as a democracy with room for female voices, according to researcher Camila Gianella.
Women’s bodies are different from men’s. We need more knowledge to better understand women’s health, says medical doctor and Professor Johanne Sundby. She finds support in a new report on the same topic.
In Nicaragua, the authorities want more women to give birth in hospital. The aim for better figures overshadow the quality of the health care service to poor women, according to Birgit Kvernflaten.
In 1967, Norwegian women were finally allowed to decide for themselves when to get pregnant. The contraceptive pill has had enormous significance for women’s emancipation, but researchers doubt whether it would have been approved today.
“The fat body carries a secret that has to be revealed at all costs; it is a living symptom that something has ‘gone wrong’,” says Camilla Bruun Eriksen. She has studied the representation of fat bodies in popular culture.
Lack of communication hampers the prevention of female genital mutilation, according to anthropologist Rachel Issa Djesa. She has observed encounters between Norwegian authorities, health personnel and Somali women in Norway.
Young women who have experienced violence may be difficult to detect. In online reader’s queries, they try to put what is going on in their relationship into words.
