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Joan Dunlop
IN MEMORIAM
Joan Dunlop Joan Dunlop, a global leader in addressing women’s rights, who helped push the United Nations to define a woman’s right to say no to sex as an essential human right, died on 29 June 2012, aged 78. The right to say no to sex was endorsed as a universal guideline by more than 180 nations at the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. Joan lobbied the delegates as president of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), which currently supports 50 health projects in eight countries in the global South. She held the post from 1984 to 1998. Her leadership in women’s issues grew from her involvement in organizations dedicated to controlling population. She believed that if women had better living standards and more independence, they would be empowered to decide how many children they would have. In 1994, she summoned 15 colleagues to London in advance of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. They wrote the “Women’s Declaration on Population Policies,” a set of guidelines that the Conference ultimately adopted. It was the first international agreement on population policy that made women’s rights a central concern. Ms. Dunlop had an illegal abortion as a young woman in England, an experience that fueled her commitment to improving women’s reproductive choices. She was also angry at the rise of the antiabortion movement in the United States, which she perceived as “an organizing tool” for conservatives promoting their broader political agenda. She often directly attacked the Vatican and conservative politicians, including President Ronald Reagan, on the abortion issue. “To give the unborn child — I don’t care what stage of gestation they are — preference over the woman in whom parents, teachers, society, culture have deeply invested, and say that investment has less value than a bunch of cells, is just to me an outrage,” she said in the oral history, created by Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. Joan became President of IWHC in 1984, when it was a small organization funding abortion training and health service projects in a few Asian, African and Latin American countries, with US $17,000 in the bank and a staff of three. When asked why she took the job, she recalled: “I was Contents online: www.rhm-elsevier.com
furious about the Reagan Administration’s policy on abortion… It was time to get into the trenches.” With promises of funding from the Hewlett and Ford Foundations, Joan took the plunge. Joan was responsible for shaping IWHC’s mission and laying the foundation for its work. A year after she took over, she hired Adrienne Germain as Vice-President. Together they extended IWHC’s reach and visibility and shaped its crucial role in global policy development. By the time Joan stepped down in 1998, IWHC was playing a leading role in influencing government and UN agency policies to ensure that women’s human rights were at the core of population policies. On her last day of work, Joan was presented with a volume of letters from women around the world describing what she had done for them. “It’s almost better than an obituary,” she said on the occasion, “because you’re not dead.” Because so many of Joan’s friends have asked what they can do in Joan’s honour, IWHC has created the Joan B. Dunlop Fund, with the goal to present an annual Joan B. Dunlop Award to a deserving women’s rights advocate in the field of sexual and reproductive rights and health from the global South. Sources: http://www.iwhc.org/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=3849&Itemid=599 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/world/joan-dunlopdies-at-78-fought-for-womens-health-rights.html?_r=0
Doi: 10.1016/S0968-8080(12)40650-4
197
Joan Dunlop Joan Dunlop, a global leader in addressing women’s rights, who helped push the United Nations to define a woman’s right to say no to sex as an essential human right, died on 29 June 2012, aged 78. The right to say no to sex was endorsed as a universal guideline by more than 180 nations at the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. Joan lobbied the delegates as president of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), which currently supports 50 health projects in eight countries in the global South. She held the post from 1984 to 1998. Her leadership in women’s issues grew from her involvement in organizations dedicated to controlling population. She believed that if women had better living standards and more independence, they would be empowered to decide how many children they would have. In 1994, she summoned 15 colleagues to London in advance of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. They wrote the “Women’s Declaration on Population Policies,” a set of guidelines that the Conference ultimately adopted. It was the first international agreement on population policy that made women’s rights a central concern. Ms. Dunlop had an illegal abortion as a young woman in England, an experience that fueled her commitment to improving women’s reproductive choices. She was also angry at the rise of the antiabortion movement in the United States, which she perceived as “an organizing tool” for conservatives promoting their broader political agenda. She often directly attacked the Vatican and conservative politicians, including President Ronald Reagan, on the abortion issue. “To give the unborn child — I don’t care what stage of gestation they are — preference over the woman in whom parents, teachers, society, culture have deeply invested, and say that investment has less value than a bunch of cells, is just to me an outrage,” she said in the oral history, created by Smith College in Massachusetts, USA. Joan became President of IWHC in 1984, when it was a small organization funding abortion training and health service projects in a few Asian, African and Latin American countries, with US $17,000 in the bank and a staff of three. When asked why she took the job, she recalled: “I was Contents online: www.rhm-elsevier.com
furious about the Reagan Administration’s policy on abortion… It was time to get into the trenches.” With promises of funding from the Hewlett and Ford Foundations, Joan took the plunge. Joan was responsible for shaping IWHC’s mission and laying the foundation for its work. A year after she took over, she hired Adrienne Germain as Vice-President. Together they extended IWHC’s reach and visibility and shaped its crucial role in global policy development. By the time Joan stepped down in 1998, IWHC was playing a leading role in influencing government and UN agency policies to ensure that women’s human rights were at the core of population policies. On her last day of work, Joan was presented with a volume of letters from women around the world describing what she had done for them. “It’s almost better than an obituary,” she said on the occasion, “because you’re not dead.” Because so many of Joan’s friends have asked what they can do in Joan’s honour, IWHC has created the Joan B. Dunlop Fund, with the goal to present an annual Joan B. Dunlop Award to a deserving women’s rights advocate in the field of sexual and reproductive rights and health from the global South. Sources: http://www.iwhc.org/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=3849&Itemid=599 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/world/joan-dunlopdies-at-78-fought-for-womens-health-rights.html?_r=0
Doi: 10.1016/S0968-8080(12)40650-4
197