WHY EXPERTS SAY CULTURAL BIASES ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF WOMEN’S HEALTH. Gains in women’s health in the past few decades have been extraordinary: maternal and child mortality rates have plummeted; access to family planning has increased; and clinical research includes women–and their special health concerns–in larger and larger numbers. But there’s …
Mmusi Maimane’s been having a bad time of it. But are the critics barking up the wrong tree? “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable.” – Toni Morrison For the last few weeks, Mmusi Maimane has been subjected to pretty rough treatment at the hands of a number of prominent black people. The Twitterati had their …
The phrase "women’s health" slips off the tongues of clinicians, public health experts, community advocates and legislators with ease, but the ideological battles of the past three decades have clouded this once-useful term. Reproductive health services and access to family planning promote health and combat poverty, but they do not represent the sum of women’s …
The real critique of last night’s SONA is not that it was boring, it is that the speech was boring on purpose because it sought to depoliticise meaningful things and subsume them under the rubric of “fast-tracked implementation” “stakeholder engagement,” and “delivery mechanisms.” In other words, Zuma deliberately deployed technical language that alienates people to …
Limpho Hani is often visibly angry about the assassination of her husband. Twenty-one years later, she refuses to forgive or forget. In fact, she bristles with rage when the subject of her husband comes up. The loss of her husband, the father of her children, is not something she is prepared to approach gently. She …