The Research – Reproductive Justice

Research Context:

Brazil has an intensely pluralist society in which ethnic distinctions typically overlap with structural inequalities. The need to create a healthcare system that protects Indigenous women’s decision-making power and respects ethnic, cultural, and religious differences is a matter of urgent concern.

Data suggests a greater vulnerability of Indigenous women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights:

Teenage pregnancy: Between 2008- 2019, almost 30% of babies born to Indigenous women had mothers aged 10-19 (Fiocruz, 2023).
Unintended pregnancy and abortion: Higher rates in indigenous population, and Indigenous women face greater risks of abortion related complications (Diniz, 2021).
Birth and mortality rates: 5% of Xukuru and Pankararu women give birth inside their Indigenous territories and 26% had C-sections. Indigenous women have 2-4 higher mortality rates.
Diseases: Indigenous women present a disproportionately high incidence of STD/HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer.

Literatures remain fragmented and tend to speak past each other with regard to the problem of sexual and reproductive health and rights of Indigenous women. Little is known about the way in which Indigenous women understand sexual and reproductive health and rights, the extent to which cultural beliefs and practices shape these understandings and access to healthcare on the ground.

The concept of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) comprehends the ability to have a satisfying and safe sex life, the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so. Sexual and reproductive rights (SRR) include effective rights to access contraception, abortion, assisted reproduction, pre- and perinatal care, etc.

Main objective:

The overarching aim of this project is to work with Indigenous women from the Pankararu and Xukuru peoples to consolidate reproductive justice by improving access to sexual and reproductive healthcare in a manner that respects their worldviews and cultural practices.

The project has further analytical, normative, and policy objectives:

To construct an inclusive and culturally sensitive concept of the right to sexual and reproductive health (care) based on intercultural dialogue with Indigenous women in Northeast Brazil.
To test and develop the concept of Reproductive Justice in the context of Indigenous sexual and reproductive health (care) in Northeast Brazil and beyond.
To generate empirical findings and written records concerning traditional healing practices related to sexual and reproductive health and to examine the role of traditional healers in Indigenous women’s access to healthcare in Northeast Brazil.
To identify and examine the consequences of potential violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health (care) for Indigenous women in the Northeast Brazil by analysing laws, policies, and data generated through engagement with Indigenous women, activists policy-makers, healthcare professionals, and traditional healers.
To examine the legal, social, and cultural relationships between the Brazilian (state) healthcare system and traditional medicine in a pluralist legal system.
To co-produce recommendations and guidelines for healthcare professionals and policy-makers working with Indigenous communities that will help improve access of Indigenous women to sexual and reproductive healthcare.
To enhance visibility of Indigenous women of Northeast Brazil in academic discourse concerning sexual and reproductive health and Indigenous rights through high quality publications, conference presentations, and research visits.
To organise events and activities with Indigenous leaders, activists, policy makers, and healthcare professionals in order to improve the intercultural dialogue and strengthen the recognition of women’s decision-making power in sexual and reproductive health (care).
To assist Indigenous researchers in strengthening their position within the Brazilian higher-education system through developing their publication track (co-authored publications, journal special issue, conference papers) and their involvement with the Brazilian and UK academic community and high ranking officials in the field of Indigenous rights.

Research questions

As a result of exchanges with indigenous women from the Northeast of Brazil, three main Research Questions have been identified. Each of these questions will be addressed in a separate Work Package (WP):

What are the constructions of sexual and reproductive health/illness of the Indigenous communities in the northeast of Brazil (WP1)?
How well does Brazilian health law (and regulation) reflect the Indigenous conceptions of sexual and reproductive health and to what extent do healthcare systems facilitate or impede Indigenous women’s access to sexual and reproductive rights (WP2)?
What role do healthcare professionals and traditional healers play in the construction of reproductive justice, and how are traditional worldviews and healing practices integrated (WP3)?

Research methods

The project adopts a community-based participatory research methodology.

Indigenous community members will participate in all stages of the research process, defining the needs and priorities of their communities and co-producing the research agenda in accordance with their unique knowledge systems.

This will be achieved through:

the organisation of one planning and two feed-forward Workshops involving community leaders and activists;
the continuous consultation with the communities, conducted by the indigenous researchers involved in the project.

Theoretical framework

The project combines insights from, and makes an important contribution to, a wide range of literatures, including reproductive rights and (Indigenous) feminist legal studies, indigenous rights and legal pluralism, health law, sociology of health and medicine, sociology of professions, (legal) anthropology and health studies.

The project takes Reproductive Justice (RJ) as its basic conceptual framework. Reproductive Justice originated in critiques of the reproductive rights discourse mounted by Black and Indigenous women highlighting its failure to effectively address structural inequalities. Reproductive Justice is simultaneously a theoretical paradigm and an activist model, which brings together theories of human rights and inequality, intersectional and locally grounded examinations of women’s embodied experiences, and social and political activism (SistersSong 2006).

The project complements existing analyses by generating empirical data concerning the Indigenous conceptions of sexual and reproductive health/illness, SRR, and RJ amongst Xukuru and Pankararu women in Northeast Brazil. At the same time, the project re-examines questions concerning the limits of protection of Indigenous practices in a pluralist legal system.