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Gender Equality Directory of Good Practice and Research
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  3. Dr Sydney Calkin: Pharmaceutical Geographies of Self-managed Sexual Health

Pharmaceutical Geographies of Self-managed Sexual Health

Dr Sydney Calkin, Reader in Geography 

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Please outline the work you lead and how it relates to progressing gender equality

My work looks at how people obtain medical treatments outside of formal clinical settings especially how they use transnational networks to move medical products across borders. From 2016 until 2023, my work looked exclusively at medication abortion pills and how people in countries with restrictive abortion laws get abortion pills across borders for safe self-managed abortion.

From 2024 to 2029, I’m leading a large project with a team where we are expanding this work to consider two other treatment communities beyond medication abortion activism: treatment communities that facilitate access to HIV prevention medications and sex hormones for transgender health.

This work progresses gender equality because it explores how people get access to medications that allow them to exercise reproductive freedom, prevent HIV transmission, and access gender affirming healthcare. Sexual and reproductive health are areas of medicine that can be highly stigmatised and subject to moral judgement as well as legal barriers to treatment. My work examines treatment communities with stigmatised health needs, because it understands that marginalized groups cannot stand as equals in society without access to sources of health and well-being that they deem essential. 

What has inspired and motivated you to progress this work?

My work is motivated by a feminist commitment to reproductive justice and a wider commitment to sexual and gender justice for marginalised groups. My work is motivated by a scholarly interest in the ways that people create their own pathways to access healthcare when they live in countries that either criminals their health needs or impose practical barriers that stop them from obtaining treatments.

I’ve been inspired throughout this research by the bravery and ingenuity of health activists who face real threats from law-enforcement and conservative movements who oppose their work. I’m especially inspired by Latin American activists who work through principles of social discrimination, building on-the-ground access and changing public attitudes as a strategy to achieve eventual legal reform.

How do you hope that this work will make a difference to promote gender equality and have you seen any impact so far?

My work on medication abortion has involved collaboration with activist groups: for instance, a partnership with the Abortion Support Network in which we created a web resource for abortion-seekers looking for practical information on travelling within Europe. With the Abortion Support Network, I also collaborated on a submission to a UK government consultation on women’s health, drawing on the group’s data about people in England who faced barriers that prevent them from obtaining abortion care inside clinics. With QMUL PhD candidate Ella Berny, I used my research from Ireland to write and submit a consultation document for their governments review of abortion provision. Beyond these NGO and government activities, my work has been widely covered in international media (in the USA, UK, France, Brazil, Turkey, and others) allowing me to reach a wide audience to discuss my findings.

What did you enjoy most about this piece of work and do you have any plans going forward?

I find this work very energising and exciting, even though it deals with issues that are controversial. My future plans relate to my new project on pharmaceutical geographies of sexual and reproductive health, which includes working with a team over five years to do qualitative work with treatment groups and chemical testing of pharmaceutical products that are bought and sold online. My ambition in the future is to make my work more relevant to policy conversations and more impactful in shaping clinical and policy outcomes.

Please share publications or resources from your work that would like to highlight

My 2023 book, Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Beyond Borders (published by University of California Press):

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/abortion-pills-go-global/paper

My 2020 edited volume, After Repeal: Rethinking Abortion Politics (published by Zed Books)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/after-repeal-9781786997197/

My personal website where my media appearances are listed: https://www.sydneycalkin.com/media

 

 

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