ABSTRACT
This chapter describes feminist intellectual work, spearheaded by the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), whichconceptualized sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in 1987. IWHC and their colleagues, most from the South, recognized SRHR as a vital dimension of women’s lives that was widely neglected, even undermined, by global and national population and health policies. These policies focused on women as a means to the social ends of fertility reduction and of child health, rather than on women’s health and human rights. The chapter reflects on IWHC’s and their allies’ generation of the intellectual capital needed to effectively challenge and change these polices. In the late 1980s, IWHC published the first papers defining SRHR and elaborating on its several components, using a feminist lens and emphasizing concrete policy changes and actions. In 1993, with facilitation by IWHC, the emerging global feminist movement for women’s health and human rights adopted SRHR as their primary advocacy goal for the United Nation’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), and also specified actions to achieve SRHR. In the decades following their success in the ICPD, feminist health and rights advocates, with continuing facilitation by IWHC, continued work on the conceptual foundation and evidence base for SRHR for use in their countries and in UN negotiations on population, health, women’s equality, human rights and empowerment. Based on her involvement from 1985, the author analyses why and how IWHC and their allies decided to work on SRHR, their collaborative processes, and the contributions their intellectual capital made to international mobilizing for women’s health and rights.
