Donate to WithWomen: Enable Midwives to Provide Women the Care They Deserve
WithWomen was created to elevate the practices of midwives and ensure that every woman has access to the sexual and reproductive care they truly deserve.
Globally, we are seeing a rise in unnecessary interventions, a loss of confidence in women’s bodies, and a shift away from childbirth as a significant life event. At the same time, midwives—the professionals best suited to provide high-quality, evidence-based care—face barriers that prevent them from working to their full potential.
We can change this.
Through WithWomen, you can help the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) continue its work to strengthen midwifery education, regulation, and practice—ensuring that midwives receive the support, training, and resources they need to provide safe, evidence-based care.
ICM works directly with Midwives’ Associations worldwide to build a strong midwifery workforce and advance the profession, so that midwives everywhere can deliver the care that women, gender diverse people, and newborns need and deserve.
By donating to WithWomen, you are investing in midwives—the key to improving health outcomes and ensuring that everyone has access to a qualified, competent midwife for their sexual, reproductive, maternal, adolescent, and newborn health needs.
WithWomen would like to pay special tribute to its first-ever donor, Wilhelmenia ‘Mieke’ Johanna Meijer.
Mieke was a Dutch midwife, educator and a passionate advocate of pregnancy and childbirth as a natural life event with midwives as the best-possible care providers for birthing women. Throughout her career, Mieke defended and promoted the professional autonomy of midwives, leading a charge in the 1970s to oppose the Dutch government’s decision to prohibit the direct entry midwifery education route to midwifery registration, leaving only a post-nursing route to becoming a midwife. Beyond this successful campaign, Mieke contributed to midwifery in her home country in many ways, serving terms as a Board Member and Advisor to the Board with the Dutch Organisation of Midwives (later becoming the Royal Dutch Organisation of Midwives – KNOV). Mieke also encouraged her younger colleagues to join the KNOV and unite at the national and international levels.
On April 5, 2019, Mieke passed away at the age of 95.5, continuing to attend midwives’ meetings until the end. According to friends and family, Mieke would have been proud to be WithWomen’s first donor, thereby promoting normal birth and the autonomous role of midwives. Her generous contribution will contribute to WithWomen’s work to strengthen midwife-led care for all women.