- Convenor:
-
Karan Babbar
(Plaksha University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Decolonising knowledge, power & practice
Short Abstract
This panel decolonises SRH, challenging colonial logics of population control. We explore how researchers, policymakers and grassroots agencies from the Global South reclaim bodily autonomy and forge new futures for reproductive justice, moving beyond top-down development models.
Description
This panel focuses on Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) as a critical area of debate shaped by colonial histories of demographic control and the top-down imposition of Western biomedical norms. This legacy perpetuates power imbalances and marginalises indigenous and local knowledge systems. Moving beyond critique, this panel explores the concrete ways in which grassroots power and agency are being asserted to decolonise the field.
This panel invites contributions exploring how social movements, indigenous midwives, queer rights activists, community organisers, and others are forging alternative SRH futures grounded in reproductive justice and collective wellbeing. The panel seeks to stimulate debate on key issues in the field. The questions below are intended as prompts, and proposals that engage with the broader theme of decolonising SRH from other perspectives are warmly welcomed:
How are neo-colonial power dynamics in funding and policy being resisted and dismantled?
What evidence showcases the impact and sustainability of community-led models of care versus traditional top-down approaches?
How do intersecting crises, from climate change to digital surveillance, reshape the struggle for reproductive justice?
A final key question is whether a decolonial approach requires moving beyond the SRH "development" framework entirely, towards paradigms of sovereignty, healing, and liberation.
Submissions are strongly encouraged from both academics and practitioners, and contributions using diverse methodologies are welcome. By bridging rigorous analysis with on-the-ground experience, this panel will create a vital space for radically rethinking SRH, not as a development intervention, but as a fundamental practice of justice.
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) gaps in rural India shape unequal cervical cancer outcomes. This paper examines how CAPED’s hub-and-spoke model addresses demand and supply barriers by strengthening PHCs and enabling collaboration between NGOs, ASHAs, and state health systems.
Paper long abstract
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions in the global South have long been shaped by vertical programming and top-down biomedical approaches. This is visible in cervical cancer prevention, which remains a major SRH challenge in India, especially in rural and underserved regions. Weak primary health care infrastructure, limited human resources, and fragmented referral pathways contribute to late diagnosis and poor outcomes. Addressing these gaps requires moving beyond hospital-centric models towards approaches that strengthen local health systems and build community trust.
This paper examines how the Cancer Awareness, Prevention and Early Detection (CAPED) initiative operationalises a decentralised hub-and-spoke model to address both demand and supply-side constraints in cervical cancer prevention. Drawing on implementation experience across multiple Indian states, the paper analyses collaborative relationships between non-governmental organisations, ASHAs, frontline health workers, and state and district health departments.
On the demand side, ASHAs with NGOs play a critical role in awareness-building, pre-screening counselling, stigma reduction, and patient navigation, particularly among women with limited access to information and services. On the supply side, CAPED strengthens rural primary health centres by supporting workforce training, infrastructure readiness, deployment of appropriate screening technologies, and structured referral linkages to higher levels of care.
The hub facilitates coordination, data-driven monitoring, and adaptive problem-solving, while the spokes, PHCs and community platforms, ensure local ownership and responsiveness. This enhances trust, improves continuity of care, and embeds cervical cancer prevention within routine SRH services showing how NGOs and CHWs can work with public systems to strengthen reproductive health outcomes in low-resource settings.
Paper short abstract
This paper critiques how Indian marriages impose pregnancy as obligation and shows how women and grassroots groups resist these pressures. It argues for decolonising SRH by asserting bodily autonomy and recognising reproductive choice not motherhood as central to justice.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how expectations of pregnancy within marriage in India continue to reproduce colonial, caste-patriarchal, and demographic-control logics that position women’s bodies as sites of obligation. In many communities, marriage is framed as a transition into motherhood, with family, religious norms, and state policies reinforcing reproduction as a duty rather than a choice. These pressures echo historical population-management agendas that have long shaped India’s SRH landscape, marginalising women’s autonomy and indigenous knowledge systems. Drawing on insights from grassroots organisers, community health workers, and young married women resisting compulsory motherhood, the paper explores how individuals and collectives are redefining reproductive decision-making as a matter of bodily sovereignty. Narratives from Dalit feminist groups, indigenous midwives, and queer-affirming SRH advocates illustrate the diverse strategies through which communities challenge pronatalist expectations from community-led counselling networks and culturally rooted contraceptive practices to public campaigns that reframe child-free marriages as legitimate and dignified. The paper also considers how contemporary challenges economic precarity, climate anxieties, and the rise of digital surveillance in welfare and health systems intensify scrutiny over married women’s reproductive choices, while simultaneously sparking new solidarities for reproductive justice. Ultimately, the paper argues that decolonising SRH in the Indian context requires decoupling marriage from compulsory reproduction and transforming state and social narratives that cast pregnancy as a marital mandate. Instead, it calls for approaches grounded in sovereignty, healing, and liberation, positioning reproductive choice as central to women’s full personhood and justice.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyses how mismatches between couples’ desired and actual sex composition shape spousal (dis)agreement over fertility intentions and examines who dominates childbearing decisions by exploring how couples “bargain over babies” in contemporary India in an era of low fertility.
Paper long abstract
Fertility preferences are a central determinant of reproductive behaviour, influencing not only the number of children couples desire but also their sex composition. Yet, research has largely treated women and men as independent units of analysis, neglecting the inherently dyadic nature of reproductive decision-making. This paper addresses this gap by using couple-level data from the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–21). First, we examine the concordance of fertility and sex composition preferences between husbands and wives and how this alignment varies across socioeconomic groups. Second, we analyse how the mis(match) between desired and actual sex composition influences spousal (dis)agreement regarding future fertility intentions. Finally, we investigate who dominates fertility decision-making, exploring how couples “bargain over babies” in contemporary India in an era of low fertility. By foregrounding relational power, gender norms, and locally embedded family structures, the study contributes to decolonising Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) debates by moving beyond individualistic and technocratic frameworks to highlight the social and power-laden nature of reproductive decision-making. In doing so, the study reveals both the possibilities and constraints of women’s agency within a patriarchal society marked by persistent son preference.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how indigenous identity causally influences maternal healthcare utilisation among tribal women in India. It questions dominant policy assumptions and calls for decolonising understandings of maternal health by centring indigenous contexts in rethinking equitable care in practice.
Paper long abstract
Maternal health policies in Global South have long been shaped by inherited models of healthcare need that often overlook indigenous populations and lived realities. Maternal health remains a critical public health concern among tribal women in India, a historically marginalised population with distinct socio-cultural conditions and traditional beliefs. Tribal identity is often framed as being associated with poverty, remoteness, and marginalisation, which constrain maternal healthcare use. Using National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data from four states—Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh—this paper examines how indigenous identity causally influences maternal healthcare utilisation among tribal women and how agency and structural barriers shape this relationship. The study employs inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) and moderation analysis. The findings show that tribal identity does not reduce antenatal care uptake and is associated with comparable or, in Madhya Pradesh, higher utilisation than non-tribal women. In contrast, being tribal consistently lowers the probability of institutional delivery across all four states. These results raise questions about effectiveness of the financing policy Janani Suraksha Yojana, which provides incentives for hospital births. Further moderation analysis shows that media exposure increases antenatal care utilisation and narrows delivery gaps, while cumulative access barriers substantially depress both antenatal care and institutional delivery. Greater decision-making autonomy is associated with higher antenatal use but not with comparable gains in institutional delivery. The findings point to the need to decolonise dominant policy assumptions underlying maternal healthcare provision and to develop understandings of care that are more attentive to indigenous contexts and lived realities.
Paper short abstract
This ethnographic study offers an immersive account of reproductive health practices among tribal women in the Javadhu Hills, Tamil Nadu, a remote forested region inhabited primarily by Malayali tribes.
Paper long abstract
Over 18 months of fieldwork (2023–2025), employing participant observation, in-depth interviews with 45 women across age cohorts, life histories, and focus group discussions with traditional healers (maruthuvai), the research foregrounds lived experiences of menstruation, associated rituals, and home deliveries. These bodily processes, often pathologized in biomedical discourses, emerge as richly embodied sites where women negotiate cultural meanings, agency, and resilience amid socio-ecological constraints. Ethnographic vignettes reveal how seclusion fosters introspective embodiment, transforming "shame" into sacred pause, yet exacerbates vulnerabilities like anemia from dietary restrictions.
Theoretically, this study draws on feminist ethnography (Behar, 1996), Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, and Csordas' cultural phenomenology to analyze how tribal women "embody meaning"—inscribing rituals onto flesh, forging subjectivity against developmentalist erasure. Findings challenge deficit models of tribal health, revealing rituals as adaptive strategies fostering social cohesion and ecological attunement, even as climate change disrupts herbal access. Policy implications urge culturally congruent interventions: training maruthuvai as bridge practitioners, integrating seclusion-friendly mobile clinics, and decolonizing reproductive metrics to value indigenous embodiment. By centering subaltern voices, this work advocates for health sovereignty, urging a paradigm shift from biomedical hegemony to dialogic pluralism in India's tribal heartlands.
Paper short abstract
Uganda’s SRH is shaped by colonial legacies prioritizing population control. Community-led, rights-based approaches show how reproductive justice grounded in local knowledge, autonomy, and collective wellbeing offers sustainable, decolonial alternatives to top-down models.
Paper long abstract
Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in Uganda and across the African continent remains deeply entangled with legacies of population control paradigms, shaped by colonial and Neo‑colonial development frameworks, conditional funding, and externally driven targets. Despite progressive rhetoric on women’s autonomy, realizing reproductive justice continues to be undermined by governance structures that distort SRH financing, narrow policy priorities, and reinforce biomedical, Western‑centric norms that marginalize local knowledge, community agency, and culturally grounded models of care.
This paper investigates how reproductive justice defined as the right to have children, not have children, and parent in safe environments is mobilized by grassroots actors in Uganda to resist population control logics and advance locally rooted SRH futures. Drawing on national data showing entrenched unmet need for contraception (over 40% among adolescents) and persistently high rates of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortion, particularly among young women, this paper argues that current SRH policies too often prioritize numerical fertility reduction over responsive, rights‑based care.
Using case studies from community led family planning uptake increases in Adjumani (from ~27% to ~49%), midwifery‑led models of care, and collaborative local health initiatives that integrate traditional practitioners with formal health services, the paper demonstrates how community agency reshapes SRH delivery beyond top‑down models. These examples point to sustainability and culturally legitimate care grounded in dignity and autonomy. Moreover, the paper explores how global funding shifts including recent closures of family planning clinics due to aid cuts exacerbate inequities and foreground the politics of reproductive governance.
Paper short abstract
Using repeated cross-sectional survey data, the paper examines effects of an Indian family planning programme on contraceptive use and related behaviours through conditional DiD within relevant states, finding higher usage and shifts in the method mix (modern vs. traditional; spacing vs. limiting).
Paper long abstract
This paper uses multiple waves of the Indian National Family Health Survey to evaluate the effects of a family planning programme on contraceptive use and related reproductive behaviours. Using two rounds of this nationally representative repeated cross-section microdata, the paper implements a conditional difference-in-differences design that compares changes in targeted areas to comparison areas, restricting the analysis to programme states so that treated and comparison units share a common policy and institutional context. The conditional specification relaxes the standard parallel-trends assumption by allowing outcome trends to vary with the baseline fertility and contraceptive usage practices; the programme effect is therefore identified conditional on these pre-existing differences between the treatment and control groups. The main specifications include area-wise fixed effects and standard errors clustered at the level of treatment. The paper also presents robustness checks which consider alternative ways of conditioning on baseline fertility, placebo outcomes, and reweighting approaches. The paper estimates the effects of the programme on both overall contraceptive use and method composition, distinguishing modern and traditional methods as well as spacing and limiting behaviours. Accordingly, it finds an increase in overall contraceptive use, accompanied by shifts in the method mix, underscoring the importance of assessing not only adoption but also the composition of contraceptive behaviour in programme evaluations.
Paper short abstract
This paper draws on data from an ethnographic fieldwork in Ethiopia to examine how global and local power is contested in SHR showing community-led models’ promise and limits within reproductive justice debates and to argue for justice-oriented frameworks.
Paper long abstract
This paper critically engages with contemporary debates on decolonising sexual and reproductive health (SRH) by drawing on ethnographic data and praxis from grassroots interventions in Ethiopia. Building on recent scholarly calls to rethink decolonised research and methodologies in SRH that centre community engagement and power redistribution, not merely critique (e.g. community-based participatory designs and locally rooted epistemologies highlighted in recent literature (Stevens-Uninsky, 2024 and others), I argue that meaningful decolonisation must be pursued at both global and local levels of governance, funding, policy and practice.
Through ethnographic-approach fieldwork and engagement with practitioners (including teachers, health workers) and young people (adolescent girls and young women), I examine how community-led SRH models are generating evidence of effectiveness and sustainability. These models articulate reproductive justice as lived practice, challenging hierarchical, Western biomedical norms. However, I also show that idealising local initiatives alone risks obscuring structural constrains – such as poverty and inequality, bureaucratic funding architectures, administrative gatekeeping, and capacity limitations – that can impede scalability and sustainability of promising approaches.
By juxtaposing global policy dynamics with situated interventions, this paper contributes to reproductive justice literature by highlighting the necessity of integrated strategies that leverage both grassroots agency and systemic reform. This includes reframing SRH beyond development frameworks towards paradigms of sovereignty, collective wellbeing and liberation grounded in contextually embedded evidence. I argue for a balanced recognition of where community-led innovation excels and where coordinated support and resourcing are essential to realise equitable, just futures in SRH ( Stevens-Uninsky, 2024; Ross and Solinger 2017).
Paper short abstract
Research indicates that persons with disabilities (PwDs) can and do have fulfilling sexual lives. Therefore, this study examines the sexual behaviour of PwDs in Ghana, focusing on the frequency of sexual intercourse and the number of sexual partners per year.
Paper long abstract
Research indicates that persons with disabilities (PwDs) can and do have fulfilling sexual lives; however, there is a paucity of literature on their sexual behaviour in Ghana. This study examines the sexual behaviour of PwDs in Ghana, focusing on the frequency of sexual intercourse and the number of sexual partners per year. The sample for the study comprises 381 respondents aged 18 years and older, living in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. Descriptive statistics, Poisson regression and binary logistic regression were employed in the analysis of primary data collected in December 2022. A little more than half of the respondents had physical disabilities (54.3%), approximately 65% had never been married, and about a quarter reported that they had never engaged in sexual intercourse. A higher percentage of males (17.5%) than females (4.1%) engaged in sexual intercourse weekly or more frequently, and those with hearing and speech disabilities also engaged in sexual intercourse frequently and had more sexual partners than those with physical and visual impairments. Socio-demographic variables associated with sexual activity included current age, marital status, religion, number of sexual partners, and employment status. The study concludes that sexual partnership and frequent intercourse are not uncommon among PwDs. There is, therefore, a need to provide accessible sexual and reproductive health services and information to PwDs. Furthermore, eliminating prejudice and stigma regarding the sexuality of PwDs is crucial for ensuring healthy behaviours.
Paper short abstract
Becker’s economic model of fertility explains fertility decision through a quantity–quality trade-off driven by rising incomes and the increasing cost of investing in children. This paper extends Becker’s framework by foregrounding care responsibilities as central to fertility decisions.
Paper long abstract
Becker’s economic model of fertility explains declining birth rates through a quantity–quality trade-off, where rising incomes and returns to human capital increase the cost of children. While influential, this framework treats childrearing primarily as a financial investment decision and under-theorises the role of care as a binding constraint on reproductive behaviour.
This paper extends Becker’s fertility model by explicitly incorporating care responsibilities—including childcare, eldercare, and unpaid domestic labour—as central determinants of fertility outcomes. Using household-level evidence from India, the analysis shows that reproductive decisions are shaped not only by income and education, but by the availability of care support systems that reduce the time and physical burden of reproduction. Historically, extended family networks—particularly elderly household members—played a critical role in subsidising care work. However, demographic ageing, migration, and the erosion of joint-family arrangements have weakened these informal care institutions.
At the same time, public provision of care remains limited, uneven, and poorly aligned with women’s labour market participation. The resulting care deficit increases the effective cost of childbearing beyond what is captured in standard Beckerian models, contributing to declining fertility even among households that do not face financial constraints in the conventional sense.
By bringing care explicitly into the economic analysis of fertility, this paper reframes reproductive outcomes as responses to time scarcity and care infrastructure failures rather than solely to preferences or income effects. The findings suggest that addressing fertility decline requires rethinking care provision as a collective responsibility, rather than treating reproduction as a private household decision.
Paper short abstract
This mixed-methods study uses surveys, interviews & Social Cognitive & Practice Theories to show that girls' switch to reusable pads succeeds only when personal confidence meets supportive infrastructure like water & privacy.
Paper long abstract
This longitudinal mixed-methods study investigates the factors influencing the transition of adolescent girls from disposable to eco-friendly reusable cloth pads. A baseline survey assessed current menstrual practices and awareness of eco-friendly options among 12–15-year-old adolescent girls in Indian public schools. After an awareness session and subsequent distribution of eco-friendly reusable pads, follow-up surveys and interviews were conducted to gather feedback on usage, maintenance, and disposal. By integrating Social Cognitive Theory and Practice Theory, the research provides an understanding of how individual cognitive, affective, and behavioural factors interact with broader socio-material contexts to influence adoption, a framework generalizable to other sustainable consumption behaviours. The findings based on thematic analysis and grounded theory approach highlight the need for multi-faceted interventions addressing both personal readiness and systemic support, offering significant benefits for the menstrual product industry, women, society, and the environment. This transition directly contributes to several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
Paper short abstract
Challenging top-down SRH models, I show how menstrual resources are "captured" by patriarchy in Nepal. In regressive homes, provided "privacy" becomes isolation, worsening distress. Policy must shift from material provision to dismantling power dynamics to ensure reproductive justice.
Paper long abstract
Mainstream SRH interventions often rely on a "resource universalism" logic i.e., a top-down development model assuming that providing material "hardware" (products and privacy) automatically enhances bodily autonomy. This study challenges that colonial logic by presenting empirical evidence of how local power dynamics subvert technical interventions.
Using nationally representative data from Nepal (N=6,480), I employ structural equation modeling to analyze the impact of Menstrual Health (MHH) resources on mental well-being, specifically testing the boundary conditions of patriarchal norms. The analysis reveals a "paradox of patriarchal capture." In progressive households, MHH resources function as intended, promoting agency and reducing distress. However, in households with regressive norms, the relationship reverses: the provision of "adequate" facilities is associated with higher burdens of infection and stigma, and as a result, greater psychological distress.
This finding suggests a "perverse inclusion": without addressing the "software" of agency, the "hardware" of development is co-opted to reinforce surveillance and exclusionary isolation. In these settings, "privacy" functions as confinement. By showing that material interventions can actively harm women when decoupled from justice, this study argues for moving beyond the "logistical" framework toward a paradigm centered on dismantling the structural power dynamics that govern the body.