FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

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The failure of governments to address women's health and empowerment broadly ... Women's health and rights take precedence over macro-demographic objectives ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH


1
FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
  • BY JOAN MEADE
  • NOVEMBER 2006

2
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE
  • Attempts to describe womens oppression, explain
    its causes and consequences and prescribe
    strategies for womens liberation
  • Concerned with conflicting demands on women as
    wives, mothers, daughters, lovers, workers
  • Several feminist approaches

3
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists claim
  • The right to control their own bodies and their
    own lives
  • That population control in the social interest
    has taken precedence over individual well-being
    and rights
  • Feminists have strongly criticized the narrow
    focus on family planning to achieve fertility
    reduction

4
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists have questioned
  • The safety of modern contraceptive technologies
    both intrinsically and as delivered
  • The poor quality of services
  • The failure of governments to address womens
    health and empowerment broadly
  • The economic policies that jeopardise social
    service and promote economic growth over human
    welfare

5
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists
  • Concede that millions of women have benefitted
    from family planning services but
  • Hold that some policies and programmes to affect
    population growth have
  • Had negative effects especially on poor women
  • Jeopardized womens health and rights

6
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists contend that women have borne the brunt
    of the consequences when government and other
    agencies have not provided the information,
    services and broad social conditions necessary to
    assure their reproductive health and rights

7
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists maintain that
  • Womens health and rights take precedence over
    macro-demographic objectives
  • Policies and programmes should ensure better
    quality and more holistic approaches to womens
    health care
  • The feminist concept of fertility control as an
    individual, autonomous act has been eclipsed by
    the concept of population control as public policy

8
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Feminists
  • Take issue with making abortion illegal
  • Contend that individual choice, safe
    contraceptive methods and abortions, when
    necessary, are fundamental for the emancipation
    of women

9
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
  • Criticize the medicalization of contraceptive
    services. Here there are two issues
  • Contraceptive safety womens health advocates
    had no say in the development of methods
  • Demographic imperative resulted in targetting
    women of reproductive age

10
RECOMMENDATIONS
  • Feminists espouse a rights based approach
  • Four components of reproductive and sexual rights
    proposed (Correa and Petchesky, 1994)
  • Bodily integrity
  • Personhood
  • Equality
  • Respect for Diversity

11
Bodily Integrity
  • The right to security in and control over ones
    body has several components
  • Right not to be alienated from sexual
    reproductive capacity through
  • Coerced sex marriage
  • Denial of access to contraception
  • Sterilization without informed consent
  • Prohibitions on homosexuality

12
Bodily Integrity
  • Right to integrity of her physical person to
    include freedom from
  • Sexual violence
  • False imprisonment at home
  • Unsafe contraception
  • Unwanted pregnancy
  • Forced childbearing
  • Unwanted medical interventions

13
Bodily Integrity
  • Right to enjoy the full potential of ones body
    for
  • Health right to be treated in holistic fashion
  • Procreation right to raise children, right to
    safe motherhood, right of gays and lesbians to
    have children, right of shared responsibility
    between men women for child care
  • Sexuality right to experience bodys capacity
    for sexual pleasure in diverse and
    non-stigmatized ways

14
Personhood
  • Honouring womens right to self-determination,
    treating them as principal actors and
    decision-makers in matters of reproduction
    sexuality
  • Taking seriously womens desires and experiences
  • Offering complete range of contraceptives
  • Ensuring women are represented at population
    health policy making levels
  • Replacing demographic targets with reproductive
    health and womens empowerment goals
  • Providing supportive empowering environments
    rather than coercive incentives

15
Equality
  • Equality of rights in two main areas
  • Relations between men women e.g right to decide
    freely and responsibly about childbearing (some
    contradictions)
  • Inequalities among women where
  • Risks and benefits are distributed fairly and
    womens decision-making authority respected
    without regard to race, class, age, sexual
    orientation etc. and addressing
  • Differences in power and resources are addressed

16
Diversity
  • Respect for differences among women in terms of
    values, culture, religion, sexual orientation,
    family or medical condition

17
ICPD 1994
  • ICPD 1994 Principle 8 reflects rights
  • Highest standard of physical and mental health
  • Universal access to health care, including sexual
    and reproductive health care, on the basis of
    equality between men and women
  • Provision of the widest range of services without
    coercion
  • Freedom to decide on number, timing and spacing
    of children
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