The Spiral of Women's Health Activism: A Report From the Global Symposium Celebrating 40 Years of Our Bodies, Ourselves

March 29, 2024

The Women’s Health Activist January/February 2012

Women from the United States, Turkey, Japan and Tanzania shared their perspectives during a panel on how the OBOS creation process was similar and different in various places. In every case, for example, the project was collaborative and used the experiences of individual women as a guide for presenting evidence-based information.

And, virtually every woman who had been involved in an OBOS creation spoke about the shift from the beginning, when the anatomy and vocabulary of women’s bodies were unfamiliar and uncomfortable, to the end, when it felt more natural to talk openly about bodies and sexuality and to see images of what women actually look like. One audience member spoke of learning about her own body and menstruation by reading OBOS when she first came to the United States from Uganda and of wanting to call her sisters at home to tell them “You have vaginas!”

Read the full story: The Spiral of Women’s Health Activism: A Report From the Global Symposium Celebrating 40 Years of Our Bodies, Ourselves by Amy Allina