Infertility no longer a “choice” for women
22 Nov 2010
By Satoko Nagaoki, associate professor.
Reproduction rights, Gender and Women`s Studies
The Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering Resistance（Finrrage）, was started in 1985 by a small group of women from all over the world. They made pregnancy a choice for women and I was invited as one of the participants. In 1991, I became one of the founding members of the Japanese organization。Our concept was to build a infertile women’s self-help group, name of “The friends of Finrrage”. More »
It is a great pleasure to write about our visions of peace for this blog site. I wear two hats—one as director of Friends of the Victimized Families Groups and also I work as a researcher on peace. Both these activities are under the auspices of the Prince of Songla University in Pattani. Peace for women, including Muslim women, living in conflict area means being able to live without harassment. They want to feel safe and want their families to be treated with respect. 
We married in April 1986 and lived in Japan for five years. I worked, holding workshops and exhibitions of my fabric dye products and running clothing import business. In fact, I earned about three times what my husband did at first even though his income grew bigger later. In 1991 we decided to try to setup a business in Canada and eventually emigrate and so I quit my own job so to go with him and help him be successful. We moved to Canada in October 1992 and bought a house. 
Access to toilets for us who are raised in the developed world is a given. But in India’s case, a severe shortage of clean and safe toilets is not only affecting the health of its women, but directly hampering efforts to empower them. 
As a child I lived on a beautiful island called Tanegashima, or flower seed island, which is located close to the south most part of the Kyushu island. I was brought up there with lots of other relatives and led a serene and happy childhood even though my parents worked hard as farmers and we were economically not as rich as people in the big cities in Japan. 
Por Diana Cariboni
