About Us
Organizational background
Founded in 2005, Women and Their Bodies (WTB) is a unique women’s NGO working to promote comprehensive social change in the health attitudes of Jewish and Arab-Palestinian women who reside in Israel. WTB is a member of the “Our Bodies Ourselves” (OBOS) international network of women’s health organizations, focusing on all aspects of women’s health in areas of conflict, with particular focus on sexual and reproductive health rights.
WTB’s Members
Over 300 women are active volunteers at WTB. We are women from a wide spectrum of Israeli society, including religious, progressive and secular women of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities around the country. We work as health professionals in key positions within the Israeli medical establishment, and as feminist activists involved in lobbying and policy change. We come from a wide range of backgrounds and specializations: psychologists, facilitators of women’s groups, gynecologists, midwives, sexologists, gender and social studies researchers and more. We are all activists, each in our own way, promoting women’s equality, justice and human rights.
Statement of need
In spite of Israel’s high standards of health care technology, the health status of Israeli women’s health is relatively poor: For example, international comparisons show that the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, as well as the risk of breast cancer in Israeli women is high, and the trend is increasing. Despite the fact that Israel is the world’s record holder regarding use of assisted reproductive technologies, there is a serious lack of information available to allow freedom regarding reproductive choices.
Surprisingly, we see that many women’s experience with the medical practitioners is of lack of cooperation or explanation, as part of patronizing and devaluating attitudes. The Israeli health care system addresses mainly physical illness and high-risk aspects of women’s health, while the concept of wellbeing and informed use of the medical options is lacking. There is limited accessibility of Israeli women, Jewish and Arab, to information necessary for the promotion of their health.
However, despite the immense amount of data now available in a quick ‘google’ search, we believe that knowledge must come with an empowered understanding of ones body and health rights. In addition, many women in Israel do not have access to internet at all. From our experience, courage and information to advocate for oneself are essential factors needed for women to best utilize the existing medical options and work towards demanding change within the medical system
We enable women in Israel to protect and promote their own health, for the benefit of themselves, their families, communities and the entire society by providing them with information to make informed choices.
WTB’s Strategy and Programs
We seek to provide accessible, pragmatic, research-based information about women’s health and sexuality in order to raise awareness amongst women, regardless of age, socio-economic status and ethnicity, throughout Israel. To this end we are:
- Undergoing the massive and vital task of creating local and culturally adapted Hebrew and Arabic editions of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ (OBOS), an unparalleled women’s health guide that was published in the 1970s in the USA by an international women’s movement. The original book includes 32 chapters pertaining to women’s health, sexuality, reproductive rights, body image, medical procedures, and many more topics. However, in order to create full and relevant local editions of the book both linguistically and culturally, each of the chapters is researched, re-written, edited and reviewed by a team of professional and non-professional volunteers from across Israel.
- Establishing an Online Information Center in Hebrew and Arabic, providing women with the information, and therefore power, to make informed choices. The purpose of the online center is not to replace the book, but complement it by providing updated, relevant information and data to raise women’s consciousness regarding their physical, emotional, sexual and reproductive health rights; introduce to women and medical personnel a more culture-sensitive, holistic approach to women’s health and to create a comprehensive database of information on health issues for women.
We conducted a survey amongst women in order to determine the importance of including an Online Information Center in our work and approach. The feedback strongly showed that women felt that not only was the information on the Internet insufficient and largely unreliable, but also confusing for the user. In addition, the responses from the more conservative women placed great emphasis on the “nobody knowing” factor. Like the book, the online medium provides them with a source of reliable and trustworthy information regarding health, sexuality and illnesses, the huge advantage being that they can read and learn about their health, rights and options without anyone finding out about it.
- Running community outreach workshops on women’s health rights and sexuality, both in geographic and socio-economically central and peripheral groups of Israeli society. Our outreach activity goals are to change the public and personal perceptions and discourse of women’s bodies, sexuality and health to a more legitimate, respectful and empowering position.
We are currently running tens of workshops for Arab women. Most workshops are a series of 6-8 meetings. Each group contains up to 20 women. The feedback we are receiving is tremendous and the demand for more workshops is steadily increasing. We shall shortly be introducing workshops for religious Jewish women.
Suzaan Abu-Waasel led a workshop on women’s Body Image and empowerment for the older women’s club at the Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa.
Suzaan summarizes:
"Asking the women aged 45-60 to put their social commitments aside and focus on their own bodies and wellbeing, was an extremely challenging task. Much patience is needed to raise taboo topics. Many of the participants focused on good parenting, or their relationships with their in-laws; the concept of taking care of ones’ self was rather alien at first… I am thrilled to tell you that their group coordinator now reports an overflow of critical discussions."