2025 John R. Evans Lectureship in Global Health

Lecture Title: Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Justice: Finding Our Feet; Standing Our Ground

Speaker: Alicia Ely Yamin

Discussants: Amaya Perez-Brumer & Kayla Benjamin

Moderator: Erica Di Ruggiero

Abstract: There may be no area in which applying human rights to health has been more successful than sexual and reproductive rights. Not only have we changed norms over the last thirty plus years, but we have also transformed institutional practices and affected embodied human beings’ lives and well-being.

However, we now face a sweeping anti-gender politics across the world. Anti-‘Gender Ideology’ has become a key rhetorical tool in the construction of a new conception of ‘common sense’ about what is normal and legitimate, and it is linked rhetorically to a backlash against neoliberal globalization. Because of the US role in global health financing and governance, and its influence on the world order more broadly, the Trump administration’s anti-gender actions have had far reaching and devastating consequences.

But the Trump administration is not unique. Further, even before Trump was inaugurated for a second time, the evolving political economy of global health had limited the effective enjoyment of sexual and reproductive rights in practice for swathes of people across the globe.

Drawing on specific examples from work done in countries around the world, this talk will discuss what we have achieved in applying human rights to sexual and reproductive health, where human rights approaches have fallen short, and where we might go now.

About the John R. Evans Lectureship in Global Health

The John R. Evans Lectureship in Global Health was established by Dr. David Naylor, when he was The University of Toronto’s Dean of Medicine. The lectureship acknowledges the major role Dr. Evans played in the University of Toronto’s history and his global contributions to the advancement of human health and well-being.

Info: Hybrid

Info: Hybrid

Info: In person at event venue.

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