5th BREASTFEEDING and FEMINISM SYMPOSIUM: Informing Public Health Approaches

Purpose of Symposium: Since 2005, academic scholars, practitioners, and activists have gathered together for a regular symposium on Breastfeeding and Feminism. The 2007 and 2009 symposia was funded in part by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Women’s Health. Over the years, the symposia have illuminated major constraints mothers experience as they seek to breastfeed their children in the 21st century. Breastfeeding and Feminism 2010 seeks to identify and analyze how public health approaches to breastfeeding might be informed by feminist insights to develop comprehensive, politically knowledgeable, and culturally sensitive interventions. The 2010 symposium speakers come from diverse academic and professional backgrounds and will speak from a range of perspectives on how gendered power dynamics, gender inequality and constraints across the social ecology influences women’s decisions about how they feed their babies and their abilities to breastfeed as long as they want.

Here is a list of topics and speakers (keep checking back because this list will further develop over time):

"Violence and Infant Feeding: Risk Management Strategies of Low-Income Women" - Nancy Chin
"Breastfeeding in Public: Mother’s bodies and the public control of sexuality" - Sally Dowling and David Pontin
"The global professionalization of lactation consulting" - Aimee Eden
"Marketing Mother’s Milk: Commodification of Breastfeeding and the New Markets for Breastfeeding and Infant feeding" - Linda Fentiman
"From Selflessness to Self-Care: Health Promotion through Ars Erotica" - Fiona Giles
"Gendered contexts and gendered constraints in public breastfeeding" - Carol Grace Hurst
"Empowerment of regulation? Exploring the implications of women's perspectives on pumping and expressing breast milk" - Sally Johnson & Dawn Leeming
“Preparing women to breastfeed: The teaching of breastfeeding in prenatal classes” - Abigail Locke
“The Cultural Contexts of Guilt” - Erin Taylor and Lori E. Wallace
"The impact of obstetrical practices on women and on breastfeeding" - Helene Vadeboncoeur
"Breastfeeding across cultures: dealing with difference" - Penny Van Esterik
"Pediatrics and Maternal Authority" - Jacqueline Wolf
Motherhood and employment (varied perspectives) - Heather Chase, Christine Mulford
"Race, Racism, and Disparities in Breastfeeding" - Joan Dodgson
"Rethinking the importance of social class: The role of media on the body stability of pregnant women " - N. Danielle Duckett
"Breastfeeding and "The Baby Block": Using “reality TV” to effectively promote breastfeeding" - Katherine Foss
“Contextualizing the Breastfeeding Decision: The Impact of Workplace and Childcare Practices on Breastfeeding”- Amanda Lubold and Louise M. Roth
"Working out Work: Maintaining Employment and Breastfeeding" - Deborah McCarter-Spaulding & Jennifer Lucas
"The gendered status of motherhood or parenthood" - Phyllis Rippeyoung & Mary Noonan
"How Women-Centered Approaches Contribute to an Increase of EBF Around the World" - Jennifer Yourkavitch