Children's
Health,
Children's
Rights:
Action
for the
21st
Century

anessa Griffen is Coordinator of the Gender and Development Programme at the Asian and Pacific Development Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She delivered the first plenary address on Tuesday.

Following are ideas from her speech, "Breastfeeding Campaigns, the Women's Movement and Women's Health: seeking common ground from diverging issues and interests" in which she makes recommendations on ways that breastfeeding can be linked to the women's movement:

• What is needed is broadening of the breastfeeding message to include a recognition of women as mothers whose health is also important.
• There is superficial and generally undifferentiated presentation of women (almost anonymously), as breastfeeders, in the WABA campaign materials and no indication of the health condition of the majority of women, who are poor, rural, overworked and often anaemic. 
• The breastfeeding movement has called attention to and lobbied for maternity rights, and for breastfeeding/childcare facilities in the work place. The women's health movement has not addressed maternity rights legislation for women workers as clearly and directly, again indicating a 'blindspot' around women's activities as mothers.
• Analysing the connection -- or lack thereof -- between breastfeeding and the women's health movement has also helped to highlight some of the potential limitations of the embracing of reproductive rights by the women's health movement. 
• The nutritional needs and status of women, especially those who are pregnant or breastfeeding, must be given more attention by women's health researchers and activists. 
• The rights framework, closely tied to human rights concepts and women's concerns about gender equality, should be carefully considered by the breastfeeding movement, taking it beyond the focus on consumer action.