This document summarizes a presentation on using communications strategies to advocate for gender equality and reproductive health. It discusses frameworks for analyzing discourse around women's bodies in development. It also outlines challenges like conservative backlash against gender ideology and how COVID-19 has impacted goals. The presentation examines how feminist NGOs use online communications for advocacy and assesses their strategies, challenges, and role in shaping policy and public debate around sexual and reproductive health and rights.

1. Gender in Development – De-Colonising development:
an event for practioners LIDC
Case study: NGOs and advocacy communications on gender
equality and reproductive health – funded by the Global
Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
Dr. Carolina Matos
Senior Lecturer in Media and Sociology
Department of Sociology
City, University of London
E-mail: Carolina.Matos.1@city.ac.uk

2. Core points
 Gender and development
 SDGs and defining SRHR within health and development
 Women’s bodies in development: sexuality, poverty and “body politics”
 Representations, discourses and rhetoric
 Role of communications in social change on gender equality and
reproductive health
 Case study - Gender, health communications and online activism in the
digital age
 Theoretical frameworks and methodology
 Samples from discourse analysis and survey
 Interviews and focus groups
 Conclusion

3. “A girl’s view of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals”*
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-
network/gallery/2016/jul/07/a-girls-view-of-the-17-sustainable-development-goals-in-pictures
* A. Leach, 07/07/2016, The Guardian – photographs from the 2015 European Week Of Action for
Girls

4. Discourse and rhetoric on gender and
development
• Development as discourse (Wilkins, 2016)
• De-colonising ideas on “gender”, particularly the persistence of stereotypes and of the simplistic
dichotomy between “women as victims/poor” and “women’s empowerment” (individual level)
• “Feminist critiques of mainstream development enterprises emphasize the patriarchal nature of
discourse that privileges men’s roles over those of women (Wilkins, 2007). Part of the problem lies
in development approaches that subjugate women as passive targets of strategic communication
campaigns….Toward imperialism, women become a prominent part of the justification for military
intervention…; toward patriarchy, women become targeted in population and nutrition programs
as conduits for reproducing and feeding new generations; and toward capitalism, women become
relegated to small-scale entrepreneurial microlending schemes…” (Wilkins, 2016, 29-30)
• Advancement of women’s rights during the decade of the 1990’s, and transnational feminist
and NGO activism - Success of the UN-led conferences of the 1990’s (i.e. 1994 Cairo and Beijing
conferences) on the advancement of women’s rights, and the move away from the discourses and
the rhetoric on “population control” towards reproductive and sexual rights (within the human
rights framework) (Jay Friedman, 2003; Alvarez, 2009)

5. “Women as victims” versus “women as agents
of change”
• Defining “gender”: ‘gender’ refers to a more encompassing phenomena – that of the social
construction of the sexes – whereas ‘women’ is but a category of gender…Like gender, ‘women’
is a slippery concept, marked by tensions and ambiguity in its meanings.” (Sardenberg, 2007)
• Debates around gender in development are still cast around “women’s reproductive bodies”
(Harcourt, 2009, 2017), of women as victims in need of saving
• “Women’s agency” and “empowerment”, once seen as radical cutting edge demands from
feminists working within a more GAD or critical post-colonial approach to development, have
turned into “buzzwords” (Cornwall and Rivas, 2015)
• Harcourt’s (2009) notion of “body politics” (the struggle over the body as a political tool)
• Renewed interest and debate on SRHR: (Matos, 2020)
• “It is my believe that those women today who are pressing for real significant change are women
coming from the global South” (Erin Williams, US Global Fund for Women)

6. Poverty and gender – the “feminization of
poverty”
• Exclusion of women in development/inclusion
• Debate women’s bodies in development within the modernization framework for decades has
been defined by discourses on the need to control fertility and contraception (i.e. “reduction of
population growth in developing countries”), understood as a means of combatting poverty in the
“Third World”
• Sexuality, development and human rights - Cornwall, Correa and Jolly (2008) in the classic
Development with a Body argued that development assumed a essentialist view of sexuality,
emphasizing instead a constructivist approach that recognises greater variations in sexualities
across cultures and also how poverty and sexuality intersect given that power operates through
sex
• Link between gender inequality, poverty and sexuality/reproductive health – i.e. how poverty
affects SRHR outcomes, including unwanted pregnancies, practice of unsafe abortions,
contraceptive use, vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases as well as access to services and
information

7. Sexuality versus poverty*
• *Chamber’s (2005) framework “Web of Poverty’s Disadvantages” (in Cornwall,
Correa and Jolly, 2008, 29)

8. GCRF – Gender, health communications and
online activism in the digital age

9. Women’s bodies: protest, agency, choice

10. Theoretical frameworks and contributions
 Contributions - gender development, media and sexuality (Harcourt, 2017; Cornwall et al, 2015; Butler,
2020; Gill and Orgad, 2018), health communications and reproductive health (Obregon and Waisbord,
2012; Tufte, 2012; Correa and Petchesky, 1994) and advocacy communications by NGOs for social
change in development communications (Wilkins, 2016; Tufte, 2012).
 Argument: need to construct/deconstruct discourses, language and rhetoric around sexual and
reproductive health and rights (i.e. debates around motherhood, tradition, modernity and sexuality)
 Core aim: To assess how feminist and health NGOs working in the field, particularly in the global
South, use communications more strategically to build knowledge on the topic, contributing to improve
public debate on reproductive health and sexuality so as to better shape policy;
 Research questions: 1) How are health and feminist NGOs and networks making use of communication
tools for advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and rights?; 2) What are the communication
strategies used, and how can online communications be better used for advocacy on SRHR? 3)How do
communication strategies reflect on daily activities, and what are the challenges that NGOs encounter
for advocating around SRHR? and 4) In what way does misinformation and “fake news” about women’s
rights affect people’s perceptions on reproductive health?

11. Defining SRHR within health and development and the
SDGs
 Despite advancements, such as in the reduction of maternal mortality, various problems remain
 * The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development asks member states to commit to the SDG target 3.7 “to
ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including from family planning,
information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies…” as well as
target 5.6 to “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in
accordance with the ICPD Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform….”
 * A 2018 report of the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission (“Accelerate progress – sexual and reproductive
health rights for all”) have argued how the gains of the past decades have been inequitable among and within
countries. Services have fallen in quality and people have insufficient access to SRHR services
 Defence of a more holistic view of SRHR – defends the need to tackle neglected issues, such as adolescent
sexuality, gender-based violence, abortion and diversity in sexual orientations and gender identities.
 SRHR can thus include from maternity health services to fertility treatment, including family planning,
prevention of newborn deaths as well as comprehensive sexuality education and sexually transmitted diseases

12. Context of SRHR and current challenges
• “Progress in SRHR requires confrontation of the barriers embedded in laws, policies, the economy
and in social norms and values – especially gender inequality – that prevent people from achieving
sexual and reproductive health. Improvement of people’s wellbeing depends on individuals’ being
able to make decisions…..i.e. the right to control one’s own body, define one’s sexuality… and
receive confidential and high-quality services.” (Accelerate progress – sexual and reproductive
health rights for all: report of the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission, June 30th, vol. 391 )
• Other social and political challenges - Rise of conservative attacks from religious and other
groups against “gender ideology discourses”, contributing to setbacks in debate and policies on
gender equality, from the US (i.e. Global Gag Rule), Eastern Europe, to Latin America (Brazil)
• I.e. Gender equality is being undermined discursively by various conservative and religious groups
across the world since the 1990’s, and particularly from the early 2000’s (“gender ideology”, Butler,
2019; Machado, 2018)
• Global context - Covid-19 and the pandemic - As the UNFPA has stated, the coronavirus
pandemic has had a negative impact on some of the organisation’s key aims, such as eliminating
preventable maternal deaths and ending the unmet need for family planning by 2030, particularly
for lower socioeconomic groups

13. Role of communications in social change, and for
gender equality and reproductive health
• *Development communications and social change – how the media and
communications can assist in the pursuit of the advancement of progressive policies in
development campaigns and programmes
• * Online communications and new technologies - Debates around the ways in which
women use new technologies for social change, amid the paradox of the “masculine”
character of ICTs and the exploitation of the labour force which works with it, have
been grouped around a series of theoretical perspectives known as cyberfeminism
• *Gajjala and Mamidipudi (1999, 9) argue that the Internet is celebrated for enhancing
democracy in the North and South, however it has tended to reflect “perceptions of
Northern society that Southern women are brown…..and ignorant” (Gajjala and
Mamidipudi, 1999, 15).
• * Various debates have examined the capacity of online activism to have a genuine
impact and reach the “real” political world and make a difference (i.e. Harcourt, 2000;
Matos, 2017)

14. List of NGOs health, gender and SRHR
• Total of 52 NGOs, networks and movements on SRHR (Europe, UK, US, Latin America and South Asia)
• Asap
• Swasti
• IAW (International Alliance of Women)
• You Act
• Global Fund for Women
• Safe Abortion Women's Rights
• Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters
• Ibis Reproductive Health
• Care International UK
• Amnesty International UK
• Centre for Health and Gender Equality (Change)
• Anis
• Sos Corpo
• Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights
• Rede Feminista de Saúde, Direitos Sexuais e Reprodutivos
• Family Planning 2020
• Promsex - Centro de Promocion y Defensa de los Derechos Sexuales y reprodutivos
• Crea India
• Inspire Euro NGOs
• Reprolatina
• Católicos pelo Direito de Decidir
• Ações Afirmativas em Direitos e Saude
• CLADEM

15. Methodology
• 1) Content and discourse analysis of institutional websites and the social media engagement of a total
of 52 health and feminist NGOs (non-profit organizations), from US, Europe, India to Brazil;
• 2) In depth interviews with over 50 gender experts and NGO CEOs;
• 3) Application of questionnaire to the communications director of the organizations to talk about
communication strategies and advocacy on gender health campaigns on SRHR;
• 4) Focus groups with young adults in SP Brazil, in partnership with Brazilian NGO Reprolatina
• Content analysis of the institutional websites, including their website features, technical characteristics
and graphic design (colour and appearance). Analysis of social media engagement and the website
features of the organizations
• Discourse analysis of a selected sample of communicative material from the organizations
• Total tweets: 1.041 (without India) 1st phase
• Total Facebook posts: 588
• * Social media engagement period examined: March 25 – 7 April 2019
• Codebook - (Data collected – March -15th May 2019, and April-July 2020)
• Partners: City, IESP-UERJ, Centre for Internet and Society, Reprolatina, Global Fund Women
• PhD students and early career research assistants: Alessandra Brigo, Tatiane Leal (Brazil), Sarah Molisso
and Jamile Dalpiaz (UK) and Ambika Tandon (India)

16. Codebook – types of communications on SRHR
Information Advocacy
Community
engagement
Fundraising Mobilization

17. Web features and use of social media

18. Samples from interviews
• Information and Communications
• Intended Outcomes
• Challenges
• SRHR framework
• SRHR framework

19. Quotes from interviews
• * Naiosola Likimani, lead of the UK’s SheDecides feminist movement, criticised the
predominance of the ‘medical discourse’ in the field, leaving aside questions of women’s
agency*:
• ‘I think another challenge that helps explain why we are stagnated is that, over time the
approach to SRHR has become quite a medicalised one.,,,.. what started off as a conversation
around rights….became a different kind of conversation. And we actually stopped seeing
women’s rights organisations in particular participating in SRHR spaces….it….became much
more a question of quantitative targets,…’what are the causes of maternal mortality, and
what do we need to reduce it?’...And so questions around agency, choice and
empowerment…seemed to disappear….and now are being re-introduced..….even if you make
certain technologies…etc available, if a women still does not have the right to make that
choice…., it does not matter that this technology is available….. If she does not have the
agency to use that choice, if there is still stigma and misunderstanding around women’s
bodies and women’s sexual and reproductive choices, and there is still violence that still
occurs in the background of the decisions…. at the root of this discussion of SRHR has to be
the ability of women and girls to make these choices for themselves…..’

20. Quotes from interviews
• “….we need to go back to the understand the meaning of the words. Basically every word
has meaning, and we need to go back, in order to understand the language, in order to
understand the message that is being used by right groups, and then we need to go back to
understand the language and in order to do that, we need do an exercise in de-
constructing that message, to understand that message, and then we need to re-construct it
in order to construct a message that is understood by the public….Because the word
gender itself, it is gender identity or equality, and we can spend an entire day trying to see
what this is, what is gender equality, etc. gender is a word that means so much and has
been used in so many contexts… In the last two years we have learned this, how we need
to send those messages that are being used in order to move back the rights agenda, we
need to take those messages, de-construct, repackage it and go back to governments and
the champions of rights….. That is very interesting, that is why, you know Brazil,
Bolsonaro and the conservative groups were supportive of that campaign, using the words
that we have seen used in the US also. The big discussion is about gender, so every
political movement in Latin America totally uses the word “gender”, “abortion” and
“reproductive health and rights”. That is in the middle of the political discussion in every
single country in the region…”
• Alvaro Serrano, regional communication adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean, of
the UNPFA (United Nations Population Fund)

21. Focus groups Reprolatina
• Aim of the focus groups – to assess how young
female members of disadvantaged local communities
consume and engage with information and
communications on sexuality and reproductive health
• Reprolatina - *Human-rights participatory-led
feminist and health Brazilian NGO working on
SRHR in the country and in Latin America
• One of the organizations that participated in the
research, co-designer of the focus groups with young
and adult females from vulnerable groups, members
of the community (SP – Brazil) (18-45 years)
• Data collection of media content on SRHR from
religious NGOs and other groups on misinformation
on reproductive health
• Advocacy communications plan for NGOs
https://www.reprolatina.org.br/pesquisa-em-
andamento
• https://www.unadvocacy.org/#/en/ (UN Advocacy
Tool)

22. Conclusions
• Communication campaigns on SRHR need to move beyond messages
which seek to change individual behaviour, providing merely individual
solutions whilst sideling deep-seated structural gender inequalities,
mimicking traditional social marketing global health campaigns (Waisbord
and Obregon, 2012).
• SRHR messages also need to be sensitive to cultural and social contexts,
taking into consideration differences of communities in order to
understand why there is resistance, in an effort to undermine “gender
ideology” myths.
• Results here show that most of the organizations are waking up to the need
of better communicating, seeing communications as a tool for potent
advocacy around SRHR.
• We also need to know more how those targeted publics, from the media to
policy-makers and the “general public”, process content/messages on
SRHR, in a first step towards deconstructing the role of women within
development, as well as the whole rhetoric around SRHR, in a move
towards a new agenda on women’s rights.

23. Selected Bibliography
• Alvarez, S. E. (2009) “Beyond NGO-ization? Reflections from Latin America” in Development,
06/2009, vol. 52, issue
• Butler, J. (2019) “Anti-gender ideology and Mahmood’s critique of the secular age” in Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, December 2019, vol. 87, nr. 4, p. 955-967
• Correa, S. and Petchesky, R. (1994) “Reproductive and sexual rights: a feminist perspective” in Sen,
Gita, Germain, Adrienne, Lincoln, C. Chen (eds.) Population policies reconsidered: health,
empowerment and rights, Boston
• Cornwall, A, Correa, S and Jolly, S (eds.) Development with a Body – sexuality, human rights and
development, London: Zed Books
• Harcourt, W. (2009) “Reproductive bodies” in Body Politics in development: critical alternatives in
gender and development, p. 38 – 65
• Matos, C. (2016) Globalization, gender politics and the media, Maryland: Lexington Books
• * Obregon, R. and Waisbord, S. (eds.) (2012) The Handbook of Global Health Communications, Wiley-
Blackwell
• Wilkins, K. (2016) Communicating Gender and Advocating Accountability in Global Development,
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan
• Reports: 1) “Action plan for SRHR: towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
in Europe – leaving no one behind” (WHO, Copenhagen, Denmark, 12-15th September, 2016)
• 2)Starrs, A. M et al (2018) “Accelerate progress: sexual and reproductive health and rights for all: report
of thew Guttmacher-Lancet Commission”, June 30th, vol. 391

24. Thank you!