RE:SHARE: Race and Sexual and Reproductive Health charities in postwar Britain

RE:SHARE: Race and Sexual and Reproductive Health charities in postwar Britain, from a transnational perspective (1960-2020)

Abstract

This research pioneers a new socio-history of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in postwar Britain that takes race as a lens of analysis. It examines the racialisation of SRH in Britain, examining how SRH charities, have problematised the SRH needs of minoritised individuals and the extent to which SHR activism has contributed to denouncing the racialisation of SRH. The proposed project offers a new history that will show how SRH was central to the making of postcolonial Britain, and also further our understanding of the way racial inequities in SRH emerged and have been sustained over time. Adopting the interdisciplinary reproductive justice framework, this project offers a holistic analysis of the racialisation of SRH charities. Traditionally, the history of race and SRH has been written mainly through American, decolonised state and international population policy perspectives. The proposed research shifts this focus and addresses the relationship between race and SRH in former colonial powers through the analysis of the impact of decolonisation on SRH charities in postwar Britain via a qualitative analysis of archival materials, governmental policies, demographic and sexual surveys, literature written by activists and oral history interviews that will be conducted with minoritised SRH activists and former minoritised service users.The project will develop three levels of analysis: the macro level, where international and national SRH policies are made; the meso level, where these laws and policies are translated into norms by SRH workers and activists; and the micro level, which centres on individuals experiences and the constraints and opportunities they face in navigating SRH services. The novelty of this project lies in its sustained focus on the experience of individuals from minoritised communities, not only as objects of SRH policies but as agents of change.

Keywords

• activism
• contraception
• sexual and reproductive health
• decolonisation
• sexual politics
• race
• oral history