‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’: Going, Going, Gone Global
By Molly M. Ginty, WeNews correspondent
Women’s Enews, NY
Sept 14 2004
“Our Bodies, Ourselves” is more than ever becoming the basic text for
women across the globe. Translators of the free-thinking U.S. text
are expanding its reach from Argentina to Turkey and adapting it to
cultural boundaries.
(WOMENSENEWS)–In Asia, it teaches Buddhist nuns how to ease muscle
cramps caused by hours of sitting meditation.
In Africa, it cautions women not to overeat; a health risk in a region
where being overweight is the standard of feminine beauty.
In Latin America, it urges women to rethink the anti-choice stance
of the region’s Roman Catholic Church.
Across the globe, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the pioneering text that
became an underground sensation in the United States after it was
first published here in 1970, is adapting itself to the regional
variations of women’s global reality.
After coming out in its first foreign-language edition in 1976 in
Spanish, the text is now available in 17 languages and Braille. It
has been published in 15 nations and will soon be released in India,
South Korea and Poland. It has sold millions of U.S. copies and–with
global distribution–garnered 20 million readers worldwide.
In addition, it recently inspired the creation of a similar African
health text, “Notre Corps, Notre Sante,” which features original
content in French and is being distributed to women in 21 African
countries.
An Innovative Approach to Women’s Health Created by a group of Boston
health activists 35 years ago, “OBOS,” as it is widely known, takes
health information that was once exclusively in the hands of medical
experts and places it in the hands of ordinary women.
In all its translations, the book maintains its trademark approach
of presenting medical information in the form of communal feminine
narrative. Testimonials from ordinary women–about everything from
menstruation through menopause and beyond–are interspersed with
articles, charts, graphs and diagrams. Speaking to readers like
a mother or a friend, “OBOS” covers reproduction, contraception,
exercise and nutrition.
As it spreads into other languages and other cultures, the text is
sparking a variety of consumer health movements.
The Armenia version of OBOS has inspired women’s activists there to
open a storefront health center where they distribute pamphlets about
family planning and sexually-transmitted diseases.
In Japan, the book spurred its translators to survey 200 clinics and
hospitals about their policies regarding women’s health. In Latin
America, the text provided material for an anti-smoking campaign
specifically geared toward women.
“Education is the most powerful tool for lifting the plight of women
worldwide,” says Sally Deane, chair of the board for the Our Bodies,
Ourselves collective, the Boston-based non-profit that oversees “OBOS”
publications. “We hope to reach a global audience while maintaining
our core of personal stories and accurate information about health
topics that all women must know.”
The creators of OBOS also hope to eradicate health threats that are
of specific concern to women.
“We’re concerned by the rise of religious fundamentalism, which
impinges on women’s ability to control their reproductive lives,”
says Judy Norsigian, the executive director of the Our Bodies,
Ourselves collective. “We’re alarmed by government cutbacks in
developing countries that are preventing women from getting basic
health care. We’re also concerned that the pharmaceutical industry
is blocking the production of generic drugs so developing countries
must pay high prices to import them from abroad.”
Each Edition is Unique Back in 1976, when they realized their
message could benefit women of all cultures, the creators of “OBOS”
translated their original text into Spanish. That success led to more
foreign-language texts and the OBOS Global Translation/Adaptation
Program, which helps health advocates across the globe amend the book
to suit their needs.
With a $75,000 annual budget (garnered mostly from foundations),
OBOS administrators transfer the publication rights for the token sum
of one dollar, then provide technical assistance with fundraising,
negotiating publishing contracts, promoting books and distributing
them. Sometimes, health advocates write their own testimonials and
use photographs of women from their own countries. Sometimes, they
use ready-made wording and graphics provided by the OBOS head office.
With each new publication of “OBOS,” women’s health advocates work
to tell their own stories in their own voices. In their testimonials,
they talk about issues that are universal among women: breastfeeding,
having an abortion, living with a sexually transmitted disease and
going through menopause. They also talk about topics that are unique
to their own cultures, such as struggling to gain access to health
care in a developing country and struggling to recover from a rape
perpetrated by soldiers as an act of war.
The unique set of health needs of each group of readers has led to
some surprising spin-offs. In Bulgaria, the shift from Communism to
democracy is taking a somewhat anti-Western form. One aspect of that
is a widespread antipathy toward feminism, which is seen as Western,
anti-male and anti-family. As a result, the Bulgarian translation
emphasizes women’s rights as consumers, patients and citizens. It
refrains, however, from discussing the idea that women are an oppressed
or marginalized group.
Much of the Serbian adaptation was produced during the prolonged war in
the Balkan region in the 1990s, so the privation of readers there was
a major consideration. “The authors dropped the nutrition chapter,”
says Judy Norsigian. “It just seemed terrible to speak of food when
people in the region were starving.”
In Armenia, where a declining birthrate and economic hardship are
causing massive emigration from the country, many people are wary
of contraception and are pro-natalist. Out of cultural deference,
the version published here emphasizes childbirth and gives somewhat
shorter shrift to birth control.
Differences like these are reflected in “Our Bodies, Ourselves
Transformed Worldwide,” a collection of selected English translations
of prefaces from international adaptations, which is available on
the collective’s Web site.
Future Projects In addition to publishing texts in foreign languages,
the Our Bodies, Ourselves collective also has its hands in health
projects worldwide. It has distributed 300,000 free books–most of
them in English or Spanish–to international groups. It contributes
to small-scale projects such as helping Nigerian activists adapt the
OBOS text to radio public service announcements and to large-scale
programs run by leading health organizations such as the Contraceptive
Research and Development Program, Family Health International, the
National Women’s Health Network, and the World Health Organization.
By the end of this year, women’s health advocates hope to launch
three new international editions of OBOS.
For the Tibetan version (to be published in India, home to a vast
community of Tibetan exiles), they are writing about personal hygiene,
which is crucial for women living in monasteries that house more than
500 people.
For the Korean version, they are addressing parts of the text to
Russian sex workers and other foreign women who are flooding into
the country in search of employment. For the Polish version, they are
expanding the section on reproductive care since basic sex education
is not available in the country’s predominantly Catholic schools.
In the United States, the collective is about to publish its
eighth revision of the English-language text. In the Middle East,
the advocates are working to translate and distribute the chapter
on childbearing to women in five Arab countries. In China, Nepal,
Vietnam, Turkey, Kenya and Brazil, activists are meeting with private
funders to drum up financing for new translations.
As OBOS international publishing continues to grow, its supporters
hope it will continue to reach thousands of new readers; women who
likely have nowhere else to turn for accurate health information.
“Most books about women’s health are not woman-positive or designed
to be used by women,” says Mavi Kalem, a health advocate working to
publish “OBOS” in Turkey. “Of all the books we have looked at, ‘OBOS’
is the one volume that provides a model that fills these needs. We
want women to say, ‘I read this book, and it changed my life!'”
Molly M. Ginty is a freelance writer based in New York City.