EATG Women Converse | Breaking the Silence about Obstetric Violence Against Women Living with HIV: EECA Regional Dimension –Webinar

What is ‘EATG Women Converse’?

Continuing from the International Women’s Day, we are presenting a series of webinars that will see EATG women conversing about the issues that are most relevant to them: living with HIV, the experience of the menopause, adherence to treatment, peer support, leadership, using drugs and recovery, stigma and discrimination amongst many other topics.

The International Women’s Day 2025 campaign theme is ‘Accelerate Action’. Collectively, at EATG we can contribute to accelerate action for women in the WHO Europe Region and beyond. This series of webinars is one of the ways in which we call for actions that can benefit the health and wellbeing of women living with HIV.

#WomenConverse

#AccelerateAction

#IWD2025

#InternartionalWomenDay

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Breaking the Silence about Obstetric Violence Against Women Living with HIV: EECA Regional Dimension

20 May 2025 | 13:00-14:00 CET

online at Zoom by registration

Register here

 

EATG women converse with Medea Khmelidze from the Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS (EWNA) about the disquieting scale of obstetric violence against women living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

 

In a conversation with Nicoletta Policek, Medea will share the most significant and disturbing findings of the region’s first community-led research on obstetric violence carried out by EWNA. We will discuss how stigma and coercion in the healthcare settings, including forced sterilization, pressure to terminate pregnancy and unconsented medical procedures, add up to the already undermined reproductive autonomy and rights of women living with HIV.

 

We will further address the importance of the community support and look at possible strategies to enhance gynaecological and obstetric care services for women living with HIV in the region.

 

During the webinar, we will also showcase the impact of obstetric violence as a widely overlooked form of institutional violence on women’s mental and general health, and on overall HIV response. The harsh realities women still face during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period should be dealt with at political as well as community level.

 

Finally, we will invite participants to a Q&A.

 

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What is obstetric violence?

“Obstetric violence” names a previously unnamed and widely unrecognized harmful social phenomenon: violence and abuse during childbirth in healthcare facilities. It is rooted in a gender-based violence framework and exposes institutional violence in formal maternity care settings. The concept names the everydayness of broadly accepted maternity care services as violence, with a particular focus on approaches to maternity services that dehumanize women. Obstetric violence is a prized political concept with rich transformative potential evidenced in its broader feminist activism across the globe in its introduction into legislation on gender-based violence and in the international recognition of obstetric violence as a particular form of gender-based violence against women.

[from the Obstetric Violence against Women Living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia report]

 

Agenda

Time	Session	Speakers/Moderators
13:00-13:05	Welcome and Introduction	Nicoletta Policek, Executive Director – EATG
13:05-13:30	Breaking the Silence about Obstetric Violence Against Women Living with HIV: EECA Regional Dimension	Medea Khmelidze, Executive Director – Eurasian Women’s Network on AIDS (EWNA)
13:30-13:45	Panel discussion	Nicoletta Policek, Medea Khmelidze
13:45-14:00	Q&A and Conclusion	Nicoletta Policek, Executive Director – EATG

 

#WomenConverse

#AccelerateAction

#ObstetricViolence

#IWD2025

#InternartionalWomensDay