COLLABORATION BETWEEN SCIENTISTS AND
WOMEN'S HEALTH ADVOCATES

Participants acknowledged that dialogue and collaboration between scientists and women's health advocates, as well as other groups concerned about women's health, requires the development of trust, respect, and mutual confidence, as well as willingness to listen and learn. It was agreed that this meeting was an important first step in the process. Many collaborative activities have been suggested throughout this report that should take place at both international and national levels. It was agreed that the international women's health movement now has sufficient maturity, organizational capacity, networks and direct experience to recommend qualified women to participate in the various activities and to join the staffs of key agencies and programmes. Such women, it was agreed, would have fluent communication skills, a commitment to building communication with scientists, and an ability to foster confidence and mutual respect in such a dialogue, along with required technical and professional qualifications.

"...the important thing is we must enter into a dialogue. Women's health advocates groups should be utilized by policy planners and the activist groups should really force policy planners to bring more human aspects to the programme". - Badri Saxena

Participants cautioned that it will not be sufficient simply to increase the numbers of women in decision making positions, on staff, in meetings or on committees. Women scientists may or may not approach their work from a woman's perspective. The participation of women's health advocates (both men and women) is important to ensure that women's needs, based on broad exposure to women's experiences, are effectively articulated and pursued. Participants also agreed that, where appropriate, research should be carried out by multidisciplinary teams that include women health professionals as well as women's health advocates. This will require establishing protocols that are understandable to women's groups and encouraging dialogue on such protocols.

Enablement

In order for true collaboration to take place, a two-way communication between peers has to be fostered. It was suggested that most established scientific and policy committees, for instance, have a certain power structure which is not easy to penetrate or change, and that it will usually not be effective to add one or two token women to a particular structure. Rather, a critical mass is needed, along with leadership and commitment from the top. It was suggested that collaboration will require, on the one hand, training "lay" women in both the biomedical and social sciences at national as well as international levels, and on the other hand, promoting the training of scientists and policy-makers in feminist health analysis. Both efforts will require substantial commitment and innovative action from scientists and from women. It was suggested that, as a start, scientists and policy-makers could participate more in women's health meetings and visit women's health projects at local, national and regional levels, to become more familiar with women's reproductive health issues as women define them.

Information exchange

A necessary tool to create and sustain collaboration is exchange and dissemination of appropriate information. Many women's health groups already carry out their own research, but the results are often not available to or promoted in the scientific community. Scientific research institutions could actively help to disseminate this kind of information. Similarly, information about research programmes and the results of scientific research, including that supported by the Special Programme, are usually published in specialized journals. While efforts are being made to spread relevant information more widely, results of research still remain largely inaccessible to non technical audiences. Articles appropriate to lay audiences could be disseminated through the extensive national, regional and international communication networks developed by the women's health movement over the past two decades.

"I believe strongly that women's groups can interact productively with scientists and physicians in [the] area [of incorporating women's testimonies and experiences]. I also believe strongly that cooperation would be enhanced if each party acknowledged the importance of the other while recognizing its own limitations". - Adeyemi Adekunle

Funding and staffing

Most of the hundreds of women's health groups in Southern countries operate on shoestring budgets. Their national and international collaboration in the selection and introduction of fertility regulation methods will only be possible with special support. Even well established research institutes will probably find that they need earmarked staff time, or special staff, to ensure that communication and collaboration take place and to manage specialized activities (such as consultative meetings). These institutions as well as donors will need to allocate funds for collaboration. It was suggested that, in some cases, budgets for research and introduction of fertility regulation methods could include specific allocations for collaboration of women's health advocates and other women's groups.

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