Race, Health, and Women’s Rights: Lessons from the Black Women’s Movement in Britain, 1970-2000

Naomi is a PhD candidate at the Department of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research contributes to a Swiss National Science Foundation funded project on Race and Ethnicity: Sexual Health and Reproductive Experiences (RE:SHaRE) supervised by Dr. Caroline Rusterholz. Naomi’s research focuses on activism led by and for racialized communities that informed experiences around sexual and reproductive health (SRH). From the 1970s onward, Women of African, Caribbean, and Asian descent in Britain organized and set up groups and, in part, mobilized to denounce racist practices in connection with SRH. From the 1990s, some of these women’s groups set up their own SRH services. Drawing upon archival materials from these activists, medical articles, media analysis, urban policies, and oral history interviews with key members of activist groups during this time, this research takes on a reproductive justice framework and initially asks: To what extent was SRH activism instrumental in the illumination of racist practices in SRH services and broader linking urban policies? How did the setting up of Black and POC-led SRH services answer the SRH needs of their communities? To what degree did the circulation of theories and frameworks among these women influence understandings of international human rights and women's SRH rights?