In a recent SRHM podcast, Eszter Kismődi, Chief Executive of SRHM (Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters), speaks with Professor Gita Sen, a globally recognised feminist economist from India whose work has been instrumental in shaping global debates linking gender equality, development justice, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
She is a founding member of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) and serves as Distinguished Professor and Director of the Ramalingaswami Centre on Equity and Social Determinants of Health at the Public Health Foundation of India, as well as Professor Emerita at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. She is also a member of the SRHM Board of Trustees, a guest editor of the Special Issue on Disrespect and Abuse in Maternal Care and a reviewer of many SRHM articles.
The conversation highlights both why it is timely and necessary to reconnect SRHR with development justice in the current global political moment, and the launch of the Global South Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Development Justice.
Professor Gita Sen reflects that feminist movements have long recognised that sexual and reproductive health and rights cannot be separated from broader questions of development, political economy, and global inequality. Already in the lead-up to the landmark UN conferences of the 1990s – including Rio, Vienna, Cairo and Beijing – feminist advocates emphasised that bodily autonomy and gender equality must be understood within the wider context of economic justice, development pathways, and structural inequalities between and within countries.
Over time, however, SRHR debates have often become more fragmented, focusing on specific thematic areas such as contraception, abortion, adolescent health, HIV, or sexuality education, sometimes losing connection with the broader development context shaping people’s lives. Professor Gita Sen highlights that this fragmentation has created openings for opposition actors to reinforce divisions between development and gender equality agendas, weakening collective political momentum.
The discussion also explores how recent global crises have exposed deep structural inequalities. Experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated stark disparities in access to vaccines, technologies and resources, reflecting wider imbalances in global economic governance, trade rules, debt burdens, and fiscal constraints affecting countries’ ability to invest in health systems. These dynamics underline how global economic arrangements directly shape health outcomes, access to services, and the realisation of rights.
A key theme in the conversation is the importance of Global South leadership in shaping this agenda. Professor Gita Sen emphasises that lived realities of inequality and development challenges must be centred in global debates, while also building alliances across regions. Development justice, she notes, is not about charity or assistance, but about rights, accountability, and fairer global economic arrangements.
The Global South Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Development Justice emerges in response to escalating attacks on gender equality and SRHR and widening global inequalities that undermine the right to development.
At a time of intersecting global crises, rising debt burdens, austerity pressures, and shrinking space for feminist engagement in global agendas, the coalition seeks to advance a renewed narrative that reconnects SRHR with development justice through analysis, advocacy, and collective mobilisation across movements, civil society, international organisations and governments committed to human rights and justice.
Find out more: www.srhrdevelopmentjustice.org