Women's sexual health in areas of crisis

Andrea Thiis-Evensen meets Dr Maria Tanyag, who specialises in the neglect of women’s sexual health in crisis areas, and examines the major consequences this neglect can have on society. 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Hey, my name is Andrea Thiis-Evensen and welcome back to Peace and Gender. In this podcast I am trying to highlight the issues surrounding gendered inequalities.

I’m doing this by meeting the people who are actually seeking solutions, trying to get to know both their research and their personal story.

These topics may not meet the mainstream media agenda, but they are issues that really deserve attention.

Maria Tanyag: You have women who could have lived had they had access to health.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Today I’m going to talk to Dr Maria Tanyag about the issues around women’s sexual health. Maria is a feminist researcher and she has a PhD in politics and international relations.

But first, why did Maria start looking into this issue?

Maria Tanyag: Growing up in the Philippines I was specifically motivated to do further research because of the - what I was then observing as gender-specific barriers to women’s health. We have among the strictest laws around abortion, access to contraception.

For me, growing up - especially as I was also developing as a person and as a woman, I was seeing these and noticing these inequalities more because it’s very personal and as most feminists would say, the personal is political.

When I was starting to observe all these inequalities that women distinctly faced, I was prompted to understand, what are the reasons why these barriers are there in place?

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Despite how far she thought we’d come when it came to gender inequality, Maria started seeing all these inequalities when it came to women and equality.

Maria Tanyag: While there is a global push to promote gender equality, and we’ve made significant progress already, we are still yet to understand why many women, and girls, die from pregnancy related complications.

Why, despite a broad support and understanding that gender equality matters, we are still seeing the prevalence of, for most parts, preventable maternal deaths in many societies. That to me is a fundamental inequality and it’s a paradox, that we can see a lot of women in many societies, sometimes within the same society, progressing.

Yet you have women who could have lived had they access to health care, reliable health information around their own bodies. That is, for me, a global problem that needs urgent attention.

Because if we have - if we do not bridge that health gap we are seeing a lot of progress being built on the invisible deaths and sacrifices of women, especially those in crisis settings, who are enduring a lot of this specific violence because of all these broader politics and inequalities that prevent them from accessing health.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: This is what Maria started researching.

Maria Tanyag: There’s a lot of talk about inclusive post-disaster recovery, inclusive peace building, and all of these things are important and they matter, but for me the question is why, in all of these things, the hierarchy always put women’s health at the bottom?

There seems to be a deliberate neglect, or forgetting that women for women to be able to fully participate in political and economic decision making, they must also, in the first place, be able to have control and decision making over their own bodies.

So my research has really shown that women and girls, through dominant peace and security development agendas are being made responsible as well in post-disaster and post-conflict recovery and rehabilitation. But it is being built on their invisible sacrifices because we are not recognising the contributions that they are making.

One evidence of that lack of recognition is the lack of support towards sexual and reproductive health, which is so fundamental.

Andrea Thiis-Evensen: Even in Australia, if you have gotten an abortion in New South Wales or Queensland, you may actually risk criminal charges.

Maria Tanyag: Why is there, up until now and Australia has got a feminist foreign policy or is moving towards being known for having a feminist foreign policy too. But internally, domestically, there are a lot of ongoing debates around abortion rights in Australia.

Again there’s a disconnect between - okay we want women to pursue and rise up to the challenge of governance, political governance. But in everyday li