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Paper short abstract

Drawing on research on vulvodynia and participatory workshops in Rome, this paper frames chronic pelvic pain as a socially embedded condition. Using creative, gender-transformative methods, it shows how secular and religious participants can co-design actions for health justice and safeguarding.

Paper long abstract

This paper engages with debates in medical anthropology and participatory action research to reflect on co-creative, gender-transformative methodologies as practices of justice and care. Drawing on the research Vulvodynia as A Silent Pain (2025-2028) and a series of workshops conducted in Italy, we explore how knowledge on chronic pelvic pain can be collectively reworked to address structural and cultural barriers to healthcare access. Rather than treating vulvar pain as a purely biomedical condition, the research positioned it as a socially embedded experience shaped by gendered moralities and regimes of silence. How ecclesiastical contexts, with their own peculiarities, can facilitate/hamper vulvar health access?

Methodologically, the project foregrounded co-creation as an epistemological stance challenging extractivism. Participants—both secular and consacrated individuals from different parts of the world—were invited to critically engage with taboos surrounding sexuality, pain, and vulvar anatomy, making explicit their bias and forms of resistance that often hinder access to information and care. The encounter challenged reductive secular/religious dichotomies about sexual health, revealing the possibility of transversal alliances.

The gender-transformative and justice-oriented dimension of the workshops emerged through collective design of interventional plans. Participants developed context-sensitive strategies—ranging from educational initiatives in primary schools in Nigeria, parishes in Austria, and Indian factories, to training programs for midwives operating in mobile units in rural Madagascar and Tanzania—attuned to local cultural specificities and available resources. Rather than an abstract principle, proposed actions embrace transformative justice as a situated and relational practice rooted in care, accountability, and commitment to safeguarding people in situations of vulnerability.