Nicola Wilson-Jones
As a teenager in the 1980s, my first experience of surfing was on a giant woodchip pile at Port Nelson. While I was welcome to hurl my body down a pseudo-wave, the boys never invited me into the ocean. Most often I’d watch them hightail away to the surf, wedged in their rusty Datsun, with that high beam of adventure thick as thieves between them.
Likewise, a friend told me that when she was growing up on a Central Otago farm she dearly wanted to go mountaineering with her father and brothers. “They climbed to the top of Mount Aspiring and I was left to be allowed to drive the tractor around the farm and have a holiday job teaching disabled skiing,” my friend recalled. It was apparent to us that free will was encouraged only between the men and boys.
[Read more…] about Women in adventure sports: why it matters
On Tuesday morning I was sitting at my desk working on this article, struggling to put my research into comprehensible sentences by avoiding any scientific jargon that would drive my potential reader(s) away. That was when I came across this cartoon. A pregnant woman is putting on a brave face, saying that her pregnancy is going “just fine”, when the truth is nowhere close! Her thought bubble precisely sums up everything a pregnant woman is most likely to face during those precious nine months of her pregnancy. Although I was spared the varicose veins, thank God!
As a child and younger teenager I had never taken much interest in my body. I remember my first period because I told my mother about it. Her response was very matter-of-fact. Sanitary pads, she said, were a waste of time. Only fussy, immature girls who couldn’t cope with tampons used them. There was no reason for me to try them because I could go straight to the adult solution: tampons. However, tampons were a gross waste of money and there was no need to buy them. Instead, she took me to the bathroom, ripped off 8 sheets of toilet paper, and placed one sheet on top of the other to make a pad. Next she rolled the wad of paper into a tube, and then folded it in half. This is all you need, she said passing me the roll-your-own tampon. And that was pretty much it. Over the years I perfected her version by making the fold first, then rolling — it was much neater.
The 194 member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) met recently in Geneva for the annual United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. The delegation from Ecuador proposed a global public health resolution to encourage breastfeeding. The resolution stated that research evidence convincingly shows that mothers’ milk is healthiest for children, and called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and to strive to limit inaccurate or misleading marketing of breastmilk substitutes (infant formula).
