With Woman
Welcome to With Woman, a collective organisation promoting women-centered care
Click below to access our full on-line toolkit
You may have seen language or policies that undermine the material reality of sex by prioritising gender identity over sex. Many people think these changes are inaccurate, unhelpful and hamper patient care.
This toolkit is for you if you’re a midwife, maternity support workers, lactation consultant, a breastfeeding peer supporter, a maternity and neonatal voice partnership (MNVP) representative, a doula, an antenatal educator.
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Gender ideology: birth and breastfeeding organisations captured
No man can get pregnant, birth a baby or breastfeed, but even breastfeeding stalwarts such as La Leche League (LLL) have stated that male lactation is an…
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Sex-based language: vital for women’s rights
But avoiding words such as ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ – sexed words, for females – hides the power imbalance. When you no longer speak about biological…
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Why as midwives we oppose paediatric transition
We support healthy expressions of sexuality and reproductive choice. Teenagers should be allowed to go through puberty, and develop sexual feelings, expression and behaviour, including homosexuality and…
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March with Midwives – Inclusion and Exclusion
Anna is a midwife and part of the With Woman collective. She writes about the challenges facing midwifery in the UK; the grassroots movement March…
Who we are
We are birth workers and activists, focused on the pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and health concerns of women.
“Midwives, meaning ‘with women, have long fought for woman-centered maternity care
We advocate for women’s rights; promoting respectful, women-centred care; challenging obstetric violence; respecting birth as a social and physiological event; improving outcomes for women vulnerable to race bias; and ensuring disadvantaged women receive the best care available.
We support women who have been bullied or ostracised from their workplaces, organisations, institutions, communities online and offline, and those who fear this happening to them.
Women centred language
We use the word woman with its sexed meaning. The impact of sex/gender-related language used in maternity and health services needs to be properly considered to prevent negative consequences; for women or for birth workers.
“Clear communication is important for everyone, but especially those who are speakers of other languages or have low health literacy
We want to ensure that acknowledging different gender identities doesn’t silence a sex-based understanding of human reproduction or sex oppression. We support each other to have open discussion around maternity, birth, sex, women’s health and gender identity without moralism or accusations of transphobia where there is none.
We support individuals and organisations to use sex-based language when they want.
We are feminists
We think the social, medical and psychological problems in maternity care often stem from patriarchal oppression of women, women’s bodies, and women’s reproductive capacities.
Obstetric violence is a form of sex-based violence against women.
Undermining women’s confidence in their bodies is a form of sex-based oppression.
Lack of support for mothers is a form of sex-based exploitation.
Lack of support for mothers is a form of sex-based exploitation.
These things happen to women, because they are women.
We need sex-based language in order to combat sexism.
With Woman 