Our Bodies Ourselves turns for help to women it has helped
In the early seventies, as second-wave feminism was empowering women to ask questions about every facet of their lives, many women sought in-depth information that would allow them to make informed decisions about their health and sexual lives. Often these inquiries were met with condescension or dismissed entirely by the predominantly male medical establishment. As for alternate sources of reliable information—they simply did not exist.
However, in Boston, a group of feminists had been gathering to share their experiences and find answers for themselves. The result of their efforts was the 1971 publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the revolutionary book written by women, for women, covering “controversial” topics such as masturbation, abortion, and post-partum depression. The three-pronged formula of the book— a conversational tone, a deep respect for real women’s experiences, and making women their own health advocates—gave women access to body literacy for the first time ever and helped spark a burgeoning women’s health movement.
Washington, D.C.-based certified nurse-midwife Whitney Pinger, who decided to become a midwife after reading Our Bodies, Ourselves in high school, says, “As a young teen in the 1970s, Our Bodies, Ourselves taught me that women’s health was ours, and that we did not have to give up our strength and power. . . . My entire life has flowed from Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
The book would go on to sell more than four million copies. In 2012 the Library of Congress named Our Bodies, Ourselves one of 88 “Books That Shaped America.” To build on this foundation of the book, the authors created Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS), a nonprofit organization that “develops and promotes evidence-based information on girls’ and women’s reproductive health and sexuality.” The OBOS website now has nearly half a million unique visitors per month, and remains the go-to source for women-centered, reliable health information.
Now, however, OBOS finds itself at a crossroads, in need of an infusion of funds to continue its work. For decades, OBOS could rely on foundation grants for support, but—with other social justice issues vying for the same dollars—major funding has decreased considerably. The group has launched a crowdfunding campaign, with a letter from Lena Dunham and Gloria Steinem, illustrating the cross-generational reach of the book and the ongoing work of the NGO.
Forty-five years ago, there was an information vacuum. Today, says Judy Norsigian, an OBOS co-founder and the former executive director, there is a glut of information—but too much of what is easily available on the Web is corporate-sponsored or politically motivated misinformation, or is simply unsubstantiated. “The problem today is that so many websites are run by companies with problematic conflicts of interest, and the information posted is often distorted or outright inaccurate,” says Norsigian. “OBOS is not trying to sell a product, nor is the organization driven by the profit motive, so it can operate in the public interest, drawing from the best available evidence. OBOS also writes from a feminist and consumer perspective, something so often missing from mainstream media reports and analyses.”
The need for thorough, women-centered, unbiased information is universal, and OBOS has developed global reach through a program now called the Our Bodies Ourselves Global Initiative (OBOGI). Throughout the seventies, as the readership and influence of Our Bodies, Ourselves were rapidly expanding in the U.S., publishers and feminist organizations in other countries began pursuing editions of their own, first in Italy and Japan, followed by Denmark, France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Israel in the seventies and eighties. During the nineties and aughts, groups published versions in Russia, Egypt, South Africa, and China.
Key elements of the program are that potential partners need to be established organizations, and they must express a need for an adaptation in their community or country. This partnership model has ensured that the project and the accompanying outreach are supported as part of an existing organization’s goals and programming. Local groups modify the content to reflect their communities’ unique cultural, social, political, and religious perspectives, and disseminate it in diverse formats to serve the needs in their regions—through print, digital, and social-interactive forms; as posters, booklets, and e-books; and through multilingual websites and community-based action campaigns.
For example, country-specific translations include topics such as the ethics of infertility treatment in pro-natalist Bulgaria, sexual violence during and after ethnic conflicts in Serbia, and HIV awareness in Nigeria and Nepal. In many cases, the women responsible for the editions face brutal backlash. According to OBOGI project manager Ayesha Chatterjee, “Our partners are on the front line of human rights activism, and as debates become more polarized and the ‘war on women’ more aggressive, they are continuously challenged in their work and can often be at peril because of it.”
In recent years, OBOGI has facilitated adaptations and outreach in Armenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Albania, South Korea, Thailand, Senegal, Russia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, India, Nepal, Vietnam, and Canada. A Spanish-language adaptation was developed in collaboration with organizations across Latin America, and a resource in Farsi is currently in the works. Just this past summer, with the publication of the Vietnamese edition, one reader reported that she was able to leave her abusive partner and seek support and safety through the resources she found in OBOS.
It’s surprising that more people don’t know about the global influence that OBOS has had over the past 45 years. Norsigian attributes this situation to two factors. “We’ve never had the resources to get a large enough communication staff on board,” she says. Additionally, she cites an issue familiar to feminist organizations when dealing with mainstream media outlets: they often don’t have patience for much more than a juicy sound bite. She says, “You cannot reduce what we do to a sound bite; you can’t put it into two sentences.”
In the U.S., as online health outlets become increasingly driven by corporate funding and advertiser influence, and reliable sources are not always easily identifiable, the availability of ourbodiesourselves.org is critical. Now OBOS is reaching out to those women whose lives it has changed for support. Norsigian says she hopes that OBOS can develop a strategic plan that would produce a steady stream of revenue to support annual operations. Such revenue would enable the support of the small staff, the creation of new, single-topic digital products that would be continually updated, and an expanded reach of the global initiatives program. With issues such as transnational surrogacy, assisted reproductive technology, links between climate change and reproductive health, and the escalating attacks on reproductive justice—access to good information about women’s health topics is more urgent than ever. It remains to be seen whether Our Bodies Ourselves will remain the trusted resource available to offer body literacy and empowerment to a new generation around the world.
