Dear friends and colleagues,

This email is to invite you to invite you to register for a very important webinar on Monday 18 May, 2020, 6-8pm Sydney time. 

Protecting women’s reproductive rights in policy and resourcing decisions – the need for ‘data and dollars’.

In times of health crisis and emergency, the implementation of the WHO/UNICEF Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding is more important than ever, but is hindered by lack of priority for investment in breastfeeding policies and plans nationally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, according to UN experts women and girls are suffering egregious violations of their human rights. Defunding or reducing health services and programs which are crucial to protecting women’s reproductive rights and health worsens the inequitable COVID-19 impacts on women. Despite authoritative health guidance emphasising that breastfeeding should be encouraged and supported, the human rights of women and children are being violated through proliferation of maternity care barriers to breastfeeding, including separation of newborns from mothers.

Our online workshop program aims to galvanise efforts to improve breastfeeding policies and funding in national budgets, by applying gender budgeting and World Breastfeeding Trends initiative (WBTi) tools to Australian policy.  Our webinars on 20 April and 4 May took a global perspective on emergency and pandemic preparedness and response planning, in the Australian context.

The forthcoming webinar on Monday, 18 May carries forward themes from the Introductory Webinar on 6 April on ‘Gender Responsive Budgeting and Progressing Breastfeeding Policy in 2020 and Beyond’, with a focus on addressing the invisibility of women in budget policymaking. Experts in gender budgeting, the unpaid household economy, gender politics and policy and breastfeeding will focus on the links between data and dollars for addressing gender inequality.  

Registration for the event and details for zoom are provided here. https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/16582/protecting-womens-reproductive-rights-policy-and-resourcing-decisions-need

Recordings and presentations from previous webinars are available on the linked webpages above.

If you want to be taken off this list please let us know. We hope you are keeping safe and well in these challenging times. 

Many thanks and regards, 

Dr Julie Smith 

Honorary Associate Professor 

Research School of Population Health

College of Health and Medicine

Australian National University