Learning from Black Communities: SRH Activism in Britain, 1970-2000

My PhD thesis contributes to the ongoing Swiss National Science Foundation funded project on Race and Ethnicity: Sexual Health and Reproductive Experiences (RE:SHARE) supervised by Dr. Caroline Rusterholz. In my thesis, I focus on activism led by and for racialized communities that informed their sexual and reproductive health (SRH). From the 1970s onward, Black and Asian women in Britain started to organize autonomously and set up groups to campaign and denounce racist practices in connection with SRH and to improve the SRH of Black women and Women of Color (Douglas, 2019; Sudbury, 1998; Thomlinson, 2016). From the 1990s, Black women and Women of Color set up their own SRH services. Drawing on archival materials from these activists, medical articles, media analysis, and oral history interviews with key members of activist groups, 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 in the reconsideration of SRH guidance? 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 from international women’s health activism shape British SRH activism?