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This post is part of a series leading up to the Women Deliver conference (www.womendeliver.org), a global meeting on maternal and reproductive health and the advancement of women and girls. Women Deliver 2010 will push for an additional $12 billion in increased investment from G8 for programs to improve maternal health.

Last month, a new study in The Lancet found that the global maternal death rate had dropped 35 percent in the past 30 years. The overall number of deaths has declined, from 536,300 in 1980 to 342,900 in 2008, but the shift in statistics is still troubling. Maternal deaths are highly concentrated, almost 80 percent, in 21 countries, and 6 countries account for more than half of all maternal deaths (India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the DRC). The global MMR (maternal mortality ratio, or number of women dying for every 100,000 live births) has also dropped from 422 in 1980 to 251 in 2008, however maternal death rates are actually up in certain countries, including the United States. Even within the United States, the MMR differs drastically among races; the maternal death rate for black women is eight times higher than that of white women in New York City, for example.

Any reduction in maternal deaths is considered progress, however most countries remain far behind the Millenium Development Goal 5- a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths by 2015. Advocates welcome the overall decline, and although hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths continue each year, the small glimmer of hope is motivation for those who have been working to reduce these numbers for years.

“The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress,” -Lancet Journal Editor Dr. Richard Horton

Advocates are also worried by the findings of this report, however. Why? It may make the cause seem less urgent. Although the reduction of maternal deaths is an Millennium Development Goal and has been made a priority at the world’s G8/G20 Summits in Canada, talk alone will not solve the problem. Women with less risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth are bringing attention to this cause in many ways. According to Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers Report, the biggest difference between life and death for a mother is a knowledgeable female health worker present at the birth. (Not all women are allowed to be seen by a male other than their husbands; if there is only a male doctor, their birth can go unattended.) The SOTWM Report found that the best and worst countries in which to be a mother were Norway and Afghanistan respectively.

This post is a part of the Blog for IWD BLOG

For Blog for International Women’s Day, we’ve asked you to describe a person or event that has helped to fight for equal rights around the world. At GAB we decided to answer our own question, and each editor came up with her/his own Global Feminist Profile.

As some of you may know, a Global Feminist Profile [GFP] is a monthly column on Gender Across Borders that highlights feminist leaders all over the world who are creating change and empowering their countrywomen to demand equality.  GFPs run on the third Monday of each month. Some previous Global Feminist Profiles have been: Audacia Ray, Marta Lamas, and Dr. Shershah Syed, to name a few. You can look at the complete archives of the Global Feminist Profiles by clicking here.

And without further ado, I give you the mini-Global Feminist Profiles from each of the GAB editors:

Dr. Lee Ae-ran, profile by Erin Rickard

Dr. Lee Ae-ran’s activist pursuits have risen out of her early experience with political oppression. Dr. Lee was born in North Korea, and when she was 11 years old she and her family were imprisoned in a labor camp. After suffering eight years of abuse she was released, and she went on to earn a college degree and eventually fled to South Korea. She has founded several aid organizations for North Korean refugees, including the Hana Defector Women’s Organization that provides women with education and child care; the North Korea Traditional Culinary and Culture Institute which trains women in culinary and entrepreneurial skills; and the Global Leadership Scholarship Program for students. Dr. Lee is one of this year’s recipients of the US State Department’s annual International Women of Courage Awards.

Hélène Cixous, profile by Kyle Bachan

Hélène Cixous is a French feminist writer, poet and playwright. With over seventy works detailing the relationship between sexuality and language, she is considered one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory. Hélène’s body of work is considered to be a wealth of self-liberation, for herself, and for all others. She founded the first centre for women’s studies in Europe at the University of Paris VIII, and still teaches there today.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, profile by Emily Heroy

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, originally from Mumbai, India and now resides in the U.S., became influential after her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” published in 1986 by Duke University Press. For me personally, this essay changed my outlook on what international feminism meant. Specifically, she breaks down the structure of the “Third World Woman,” and how  oppression is very diverse, from country to country and from culture to culture. Mohanty writes about this subject further in a book of essays entitled Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Mohanty is currently the department chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Read the rest of this entry →

Satellite Image of Lake Turkana via Wikipedia

Last week, the Gibe III hydroelectric power plant in Ethiopia has to shut down following a tunnel collapse, a problem similar to one suffered by Gibe II, but this is not a permanent closure. The impact of this project highlights some of the paradoxes and problems of hydroelectric energy, as subject I’ve blogged about before in the contexts of China and the American Pacific Northwest. While dams provide electricity without the greenhouse emissions of coal-burning plants, they can hardly be called green or clean given the damage they do to local ecosystems. Gibe III endangers the balance of the world’s largest desert lake, Lake Turkana, and in so doing it threatens the ability of more than half a million people who live around the lake to get enough to eat. The hundreds of thousands of indigenous people who live in the Omo River Valley will see their agriculture disrupted by changes to the river’s flood cycle. These groups were not consulted during the dam planning process. Read the rest of this entry →

The Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Situation Report is a monthly column highlighting advances or setbacks in SRHR policy internationally.

This month instead of focusing on a specific country, I’m going to broaden the scope to address a global epidemic– maternal mortality.  Each year more than a half a million women die during pregnancy, giving birth, or in the critical few weeks following birth.  That’s one woman every minute; most die from preventable causes, and most deaths (99%) occur in poor countries.  In fact, the difference between maternal death rates in developing countries as compared to developed countries is absolutely staggering.  Women in the developing world are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth than their counterparts in industrialized countries.  According to a UNICEF report, “A woman in Niger has a one in seven chance of dying during the course of her lifetime from complications during pregnancy or delivery. That’s in stark contrast to the risk for mothers in America, where it’s one in 4,800 or in Ireland, where it’s just one in 48,000.”  In addition to those women who perish, for each death 20 women suffer from illness or permanent injury like fistula.

Read the rest of this entry →

These girls hope for a brighter future (courtesy: Ahron de Leeuw)

After a progressive law change in 2004, safe abortion in Ethiopia should be accessible for many women.  But it’s not, and women are still dying and getting seriously injured as a result.   “Not Yet Rain” is a new documentary by Lisa Russell and Ipas, which shines a spotlight on this issue by telling the poignant stories of several women who have tried or are still trying to exercise their reproductive rights in an environment that is less-than-supportive.

We all know a law on the books can mean something very different on the ground.  And while sometimes that’s a good thing (until 2003, “sodomy” in Idaho was technically a felony punishable by up to five years in the slammer.  But was there really no “action” in Idaho before Y2K?), in the case of women’s rights and reproductive rights, it’s a very bad thing. Read the rest of this entry →