On Tuesday, July 8, 2025, we had another conversation on our X/Twitter Space with three women on the cost of silence and shame around sexual and reproductive health issues for women. This time, we switched things up a bit and had one of our speakers, Dr. Kieva Chris Amusan, founder of Fertitude, moderate the session.
Our speakers, Ore Badmus, Co-Founder of TEMSI Africa and Dr. Anumah Rufina, a Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist at Bloom Fertility, brought a mix of medical and corporate expertise, as well as stories showing their experiences with these issues. The goal was to show women how to break their silences and ultimately free ourselves from the shame that comes with talking about our bodies.
Here are four things to do to make sure this happens.
1. Know Your Body
The session kicked off with an understanding of the things that are universal experiences for women, such as periods, to the many things our bodies go through that we’re often taught to keep quiet about. For our speakers, understanding what’s happening (or could happen) to your body is the first step in breaking the silence and shame that surrounds women’s health.
We can’t challenge what we don’t know or understand.
They also touched on how social media has become both a tool for awareness and a hotbed for misinformation. That’s why more women are turning to gynaecologists, not just when something’s wrong, but to fact-check the things they’re hearing online.
If you read something online and you’re unsure about it or it seems a little scary, speak to a professional. Chances are, it’s a lot less scary and complicated than the internet makes it seem. Sometimes it won’t be, but the earlier we tackle these issues, the better. At the end of the day, taking ownership of your sexual and reproductive health is something only you can do.
2. Saturate the Health Care Space with Women Professionals
It’s one thing to have women flooding health clinics to address sexual and reproductive health concerns; it’s another thing to have professionals capable of providing the desired support and understanding women want. Our speakers shared stories where they’d experienced dissatisfactory services from male health professionals and ones where their actions had been misinterpreted as harsh. They concluded on two things. The first is that sometimes, speaking to women about these issues is easier because they understand.
Chances are they’ve been there before or have empathised with someone who has. While this is necessary, the female healthcare space still falls short of the expected standard/quota. We need more women to help women. The second was in giving male professionals grace, not because they lack empathy, but because sometimes, people are unaware of their actions and how they affect the receiving party. Sometimes, explaining further is all you need to do.
3. Make Sexual and Reproductive Health Commonplace at Work
If you work in corporate, or anywhere really, and you’re a woman, you’ve probably had a moment when you were on your period and panicked a little before standing up from your seat to use the restroom, or asked someone to check if you were stained. You’ve probably also had bad cramp days and got too scared to call in sick. As adults, most of our living hours are spent at the office, and womanhood is a shared universal experience.
We need to stop acting like periods aren’t normal and these things don’t happen. Offices have to be flexible enough to accommodate the complexities and inconveniences that come with being a woman. We need to normalise HMOs, including services that cater to sexual and reproductive health issues. Every day, women try to prove themselves worthy of their professional positions by sitting through pain and getting work done or cutting short recovery days after surgeries to prove they’re committed and dedicated to their jobs. But getting stained and ensuring full recovery and good health is where we draw the line. We need to get our priorities in order.
4. Normalise Sexual and Reproductive Health Conversations
Perhaps the most important is normalising conversations surrounding sexual and reproductive health issues amongst ourselves and in our homes. The session started with our speakers talking about how they learnt about their bodies. Beyond proxy and indirect learning, no experience spoke on the direct passing of information from an able and competent adult.
Sexual and reproductive health issues have a hush-hush factor attached to them, especially when it comes to educating young girls. But everyone needs to learn about these things, and we need to know about them properly. When we’re telling young girls about periods, we don’t need to include myths of pregnancy if they get touched by boys, and we don’t need to pretend that young adults aren’t having sex. We can’t solve the problem by not speaking about it. We need to trust the capacity of girls and women to be sexually responsible for themselves.
Click this link to hear our speakers’ experiences directly.
Also, share your thoughts and tips with us in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!
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