By: June Shimuoshili
There is a painful contradiction in how society treats women.
We tell girls to avoid pregnancy when they are young. We tell women to establish careers. We tell them to wait until they are financially ready.
Then, when a woman finally wants a child and experiences difficulty conceiving, society asks, “What is wrong with her?”
We need to stop.
Infertility can affect both women and men, and the reasons can be medical, reproductive, hormonal or otherwise complex. Yet social judgement often arrives before medical diagnosis.
For some women, the emotional burden is enormous.
They are asked when they will have children.
Relatives make jokes.
Friends announce pregnancies.
Church communities may pray over them without understanding the pain they are experiencing.
And some women begin believing that they are somehow incomplete.
We need a different conversation.
Parenthood should be a choice, not a measure of a woman’s worth.
At the same time, women and couples who want children should have access to appropriate reproductive healthcare and accurate information.
Affordability matters too. Fertility-related care can become expensive, particularly where treatment requires repeated procedures or medication. Namibia’s medical-aid landscape does not offer identical fertility benefits across schemes and plans.
This is therefore both a social and health issue.
We need to educate communities that infertility is not a curse.
We need men to participate in fertility investigations.
We need healthcare providers to provide respectful care.
And we need the media to tell stories that do not reduce women to their ability to become mothers.
A woman is more than motherhood.
And infertility should never make her feel like less of a woman.
