Breastfeeding and Feminism Symposium - 2012
About the Symposium
Since 2005 this symposium has brought together academic scholars, practitioners, activists, and policy makers from the United States and abroad who are interested in considering feminist perspectives to address breastfeeding as a health priority for women and children.Since 2005 the six Breastfeeding and Feminism Symposia have stimulated a growth in public discourse and scholarship on the sociocultural, economic, and political constraints to women’s infant feeding choices. In addition, the symposia have focused attention on how public health approaches to breastfeeding must go beyond promoting health to include serious consideration of the realities of women’s lives, which are complicated by structural inequities that feminists investigate through gender, race, and class analysis.
Our view is that the public health goal to improve breastfeeding is intertwined with the feminist goal to improve the status of women. Though these symposia we seek to identify how we can improve the social, economic, political and cultural environment that enables women to breastfeed and continue their participation in social, economic, community and political life.