This pioneering collection explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people – young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative -…
The idea for this supplement arose from discussions among a set of research partners associated with the Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium (RR RPC), an international partnership funded by the UK Department for International Development from 2005-10 that focused on neglected areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). In the Consortium, work on rights has been concerned with ways of bridging the gap between international legal human rights frameworks as applied to SRHR, and how these play out for actual people ‘on the ground’. We noted that there was a well-developed international language of human rights in relation to sexual…
There is growing interest in the ways in which legal and human rights issues related to sex work affect sex workers’ vulnerability to HIV and abuses including human trafficking and sexual exploitation. International agencies, such as UNAIDS, have called for decriminalisation of sex work because the delivery of sexual and reproductive health services is affected by criminalisation and social exclusion as experienced by sex workers. The paper reflects on the connections in various actors’ framings between sex workers sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the ways that international law is interpreted in policing and regulatory practices.
This commentary introduces the HARPS supplement on getting research into policy and practice in sexual and reproductive health (SRH). The papers in this supplement have been produced by the Sexual Health and HIV Evidence into Practice (SHHEP) collaboration of international research, practitioner and advocacy organizations based in research programmes funded by the UK Department for International Development.
The commentary describes the increasing interest from research and communication practitioners, policy makers and funders in expanding the impact of research on policy and practice. It notes the need for contextually embedded understanding of ways to engage multiple stakeholders in the politicized, sensitive and often contested arenas of sexual and reproductive health. The commentary then introduces the papers under their respective themes: (1) The theory and practice of research engagement (two global papers); (2) Applying policy analysis to explore the role of research evidence in SRH and HIV/AIDS policy (two papers with examples from Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia); (3)…
Depictions of sexuality are beamed into our homes through satellite TV, pored over in internet cafes, catapulted around social and technological networks, stitched into the material of women’s attire, whispered in children’s bedtime tales, captured and disseminated in epidemiological data and crooned over the airwaves. But despite its ubiquity, international development has failed to afford sexuality the prominence that it should.
What does sexuality have to do with women’s empowerment? Research from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC shows that sexuality affects women’s political and economic empowerment in a number of important ways. For example, in the ways that women experience seeking election to political office, how women are treated and respected (or disrespected) in the workplace and in public, and how families and communities place expectations on how women should behave. Being exposed to sexual harassment and sexual violence and not being able to exercise choice in their sexual relationships affects women’s wellbeing and ultimately undermines political, social and economic…
From the 21–23 June 2006, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance) and Reproductive Health Matters (RHM) hosted an international meeting in London to bring together a range of experts from academia, civil society, multilateral organisations and government. The purpose of this meeting was to facilitate dialogue between participants from different disciplines and geographical areas to explore successful methods of promoting condom use and barriers to condom promotion.
China is managing major health system reforms against a background of rapid economic and institutional change. In doing so it is developing a learning approach to transition management and institution-building. This approach includes testing innovations at local level, encouraging learning from success, and then gradually building institutions that support new ways of doing things. Chinese policymakers and analysts are also developing strategies for drawing on international experience. Analysts from other countries and officials in organisations that support international health need to understand this approach if they are to strengthen mutual learning with their Chinese counterparts.