Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Photo Credit Dominic Chavez

As originally seen at Global Post.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007 and the first woman President in Eastern Europe, was in Washington, D.C. this week for a series of meetings, including an Aspen Global Health and Development event titled, “7 Billion: Conversations That Matter ‘Good Governance and the Women Dividend'.” She is a member of Aspen’s Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health. Vike-Freiberga spoke to writer John Donnelly about advancing women’s reproductive health issues, the need for doctors to treat women with more dignity, and about how she got “the scare of my life” as a young girl living in Morocco when an older man tried to persuade her father for her hand in marriage.

Why did you first start to get involved in advocating for women’s reproductive health issues?

During my presidency, I came in contact with a wide spectrum of needs and necessities that were not being taken care of. The women’s question was one among many. But myself being a woman and because of certain life experiences, I related to these issues.

Since the end of my second term, like other former presidents, I have become involved in a number of groups of like-minded people who feel there are a great many needs in the world, a great many problems, where our experience is very useful. I am most active in the Club de Madrid, which took on a variety of projects about empowering women. I went to Uganda to try to convince government to give property rights to women, and I went to Colombia to address the difficulties of displaced families on the so-called drug route. In Latvia, we have found our indicators for women’s reproductive health were at the tail end within the European Union in terms of maternal mortality and early infant mortality. Since our independence, these figures have been going down – improving. During the Soviet times as well, there were more abortions.

What has happened since with abortions?

Since independence, there has been fewer of them.

Why?

Because of the availability of contraceptives and family planning.

You are a member of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health. How can being part of a group like this help advance social issues?

There are two ways of looking at it. Each member can continue being active in their own country and to put pressure on legislatures, and to approach their populations of women as well as doctors. I’ve heard many stories from women in Latvia who have said doctors were so dismissive of them. Their attitude toward patients was not what one would like to see. In Canada and the U.S., the medical profession with women patients also could be improved. These doctors sort of push women through like sausages in a factory on a production line. Medical personnel need to be reminded that relating well to people can prevent many problems, especially with women and girls.

The second way is working in countries where the rights of women are totally ignored or don’t exist, and it’s a huge problem to get changes accepted. In Uganda, several attempts by the Club de Madrid have not been successful in trying to give property rights to women. That is catastrophic in northern Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army has killed so many men, and a woman can be thrown off the land she has been cultivating for many years.

Finish reading Vaira Vike-Freiberga's Q&A at Global Post.