Abstract
Women everywhere are fighting for control of decisions that affect their health. They are struggling with political and religious leaders who are defining the parameters of sex, sexuality, and gender. This chapter describes why women organize, the obstacles they confront, and their resistance at the national and international levels. Histories of national women’s movements in Egypt, India, Peru, South Africa, and the United States contextualize contemporary women’s health movements in these countries and at the United Nations.
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Notes
- 1.
Rapists can still avoid punishment by marrying their victims in the following countries (as of May 2018): Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mozambique, Syria, and Tajikistan. Rape within the context of marriage (called “marital rape”) is a separate issue.
- 2.
Female circumcision, female genital cutting, and female genital mutilation are procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia—the terminology is the subject of debate. WHO uses female genital mutilation; Asma Abdel Halim, a Sudanese activist, prefers female circumcision (personal communication, 30 July 2018), and Tostan, like many other groups working to end this harmful practice, refers to it as female genital cutting.
- 3.
Not all women’s movements are feminist, meaning the critique of male bias and the examination of women’s subordination. Feminism, a term first used in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and publicized by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, has many interpretations (socialist, radical, lesbian, cultural, women of color). This book does not insist on such distinctions among women’s movements.
- 4.
For a full discussion of the contributions and failures of NGOs to health services, see Turshen (1999).
- 5.
The Hindu Marriage Act (1955), the Hindu Succession Act, and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (1956), followed by the Dowry Prohibition Act (1961), were collectively known as the Hindu Code Bills; originally designed to give equal property rights to women, abolish customary law, and specify grounds for divorce, the Constituent Assembly passed a watered-down version, more symbolic than substantive.
- 6.
The woman question, concerning private property, control of material assets, and woman’s relation to man within families and society, was a major subject of debate within the social democratic and communist organizations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- 7.
Philadelphians established the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1775, and the British organized the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
- 8.
The Washington Consensus, a consensus for equitable growth and sustainable development to be achieved through privatization of public assets, liberalization of trade, and price stability, came to be seen as a consensus for the liberalization of capital markets and neoliberal globalization. For a full discussion, see Serra and Stiglitz (2008).
- 9.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW ) requires each state to submit a periodic progress report. A shadow report is a formal review of that state report prepared by a coalition of civil society organizations for the CEDAW Committee.
- 10.
The first convened in 1977 in Rome, the second in 1980 in Hanover, the third in 1981 in Geneva, the fourth in 1984 in Amsterdam, the fifth in 1987 in Costa Rica, the sixth in 1990 in Manila, the seventh in 1993 in Kampala, the eighth in 1996 in Rio de Janeiro, the ninth in 2002 in Toronto, and the tenth in 2005 in New Delhi. The 11th convened in 2011 in Brussels, and the 12th in 2015 in Santo Domingo.
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Turshen, M. (2020). Women Organizing: Activism Worldwide. In: Women’s Health Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9467-6_1
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