I became a feminist the day I became a mother Dr Andrea Dibben
Dr Dibben explained that while the Women’s Rights Foundation made headlines following their judicial protest to introduce the Morning After Pill in Malta, the Foundation has actually been assisting women subject to various forms of abuse for the past four years.
What attracted you to the world of social studies?
I was brought up in a workingclass family in a housing estate in Bormla, an area which in today’s terms would be called as ‘socially deprived’. I always did well in school and my parents always encouraged and supported me to continue my education despite always being the odd one out in my neighbourhood: the only child who studied and did well in exams. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I therefore developed an acute awareness of social issues. I had seen firsthand what social injustice looked like and felt this drive to do something to achieve social change. When I went to sixth form and studied Sociology, I could link my life experience to intellectual theory and I was fascinated with this new world of knowledge. Social work and social policy seemed like a natural choice from there.
As a social worker, what were your duties?
When I graduated from social work in 2002, I started working with YMCA and the majority of my service users were mothers: homeless mothers, mothers who were escaping situations of violence, teenage mothers, lone mothers who were experiencing acute poverty and housing issues and eventually asylum seekers and migrant mothers. So women, especially motherhood eventually became the area that I focused on through various social projects and research.
What did you learn from your time on the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality?
One of my favorite feminists, Adrienne Rich, when talking about her book on motherhood said, ‘I did not choose this subject; it has long ago chosen me’. The same can be said of my doctoral research which consisted of a feminist ethnographic study with pregnant teenagers and young mothers. The subject of my dissertation was conceived
What many out there do not know is that in four years, WRF has legally assisted 402 women, their children and young adolescent victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence, three female victims of sexual harassment, eight female victims of rape, one victim of racial and gender based violence and 43 victims of human trafficking.
when, two days after I finished my Matriculation exams, at 17 years old, I gave birth to a baby girl.
I was unmarried and living with my parents and for the next four years I shared a room with both my sister and daughter as I juggled motherhood, a relationship, adolescence and an undergraduate degree. Looking back at the past 18 years, I am acutely aware of how the experience of mothering my daughter, and later on my son, has had an enormous bearing on my identity as well as having affected both my personal and professional life trajectory. I became a feminist the day I became a mother and realised that my experience was very much shaped by a construction of motherhood that was far from empowering to women.
Our society is strongly influenced by ideologies that position motherhood as a sacred and sacrificing endeavor that is carried out instinctively and exclusively by women. Policies and services further support these gendered expectations as evidenced by the lack of policies and services addressing men’s roles as fathers.
Your PhD focuses on teenage pregnancy and motherhood, could you briefly describe the aims behind this study?
Through my study I aimed to present the experiences of young mothers from their own perspective and their own voices. Young mothers challenge patriarchal attitudes that prescribe certain conditions for ‘good’ motherhood because they are young, they are single and they are mostly poor. Young mothers in my study believed that they were strong especially when it came to doing right by their children. They were able to make decisions for their own and their children’s wellbeing even when faced with various challenges. Yet, because they are mothering outside the boundaries of ‘good’ motherhood they continue to be the targets of social disdain and restrictive government interventions.
Were there any overarching findings?
One conclusion from my study that led me to focus more on the area of sexual and reproductive health was the lack of sexual subjectivity experienced by young mothers, whose sexual and intimate relationships were often characterized by an imbalance of power and inequality. None of my participants had been using contraception at the time they got pregnant and while for some, this was because they actually wanted to get pregnant, for others it was clear that it was due to lack of sexual subjectivity and male dominance in relationships that weakened their ability to negotiate contraceptive use. Which is why one of the things I emphasise is the importance of sexuality education that challenges the double standards surrounding female sexuality and much wider access to a whole range of contraception, including female-controlled long acting contraception.
What attracted you to the Women’s Rights Foundation?
After I finished my doctoral studies, I wanted to become more active at a grassroots level. It had always been my dream to set up an NGO or an Association that empowered women, especially mothers and when I found out about the invaluable work that Dr Lara Dimitrijevic had been doing since the inception of Women’s Rights Foundation, mostly on her own, I thought it made more sense to join forces with her. While Women’s Rights Foundation only made the headlines last year when we filed the judicial protest for emergency contraception, what many out there do not know is that in four years, WRF has legally assisted 402 women, their children and young adolescent victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence, three female victims of sexual harassment, eight female victims of rape, one victim of racial and gender based violence and 43 victims of human trafficking.
What’s on the agenda for the Women’s Rights Foundation?
Our plans at Women’s Rights Foundation is to keep working on various projects in the area of gender based violence and sexual harassment. We definitely plan on working further in the area of sexual and reproductive education, since if anything, our experience last year showed clearly the lack of knowledge and the misogynistic attitudes that prevail in our society when it comes to female sexuality. Right now, we are working hard on an event for International Women’s Day that will be held on Saturday 11 March in the afternoon in Valletta which aims to celebrate the social, economic and political achievements of women and launch the #beboldforchange campaign, which is the theme chosen internationally for this year’s Women’s Day. The event is being held in collaboration with various NGOs and is going to include a march, shows, stalls, interviews, a children’s corner: an outing for all the family.
I was unmarried and living with my parents and for the next four years I shared a room with both my sister and daughter as I juggled motherhood, a relationship, adolescence and an undergraduate degree.