Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women’s Health
Professor Sophie Harman, Deputy Head of School and Director of Research in the School of Politics and International Relations
Please outline the work you lead and how it relates to progressing gender equality
My work is about how global politics shapes women’s health outcomes and how women’s health is used as a political tool to gain and sustain power in the world. I have pursued this work over three projects. The first, has been to look at the gendered impacts of health emergencies and pandemics on women, from HIV/AIDS, to Ebola to COVID-19. The second has been co-producing a BAFTA-nominated feature film, Pili, with women living with HIV to explore the gendered dynamics of HIV/AIDS. Finally, through my book Sick of It: the global fight for women’s health.
What has inspired and motivated you to progress this work?
I am fortunate to have met the most incredible women in my career, from community health care workers, to activists, to policy-makers working under difficult institutional constraints, to women volunteering their time to drive women across borders to access healthcare. All of whom continue to inspire me to do this work. Teaching students about my work is a privilege and an absolute treat, especially when feeling weary about the world, they always introduce new energy and insight to these issues and keep me on my toes!
How do you hope that this work will make a difference to promote gender equality and have you seen any impact so far?
If you understand how power works you can begin to name it and investigate the patterns as a basis to change something. This is core to my work: first, to demonstrate how global politics shapes women’s health in predominantly (but not always!) detrimental ways as a means to stop this from happening; and second, to empower people from all walks of life to understand the relationship between international relations and gender equality. Unfortunately, we are seeing more regression than progress on women’s health, and more and more use of women’s health as a political tool to gain power in the world. While my work is timely, this is not necessarily a good thing; but I do outline steps that anyone can take to fight back at the end of Sick of It.
What did you enjoy most about this piece of work and do you have any plans going forward?
My plans going forward are to develop work with policy makers, activists, and practitioners around Sick of It in response to a number of threats to women’s health: notably Trump and the rise of the global far right, attacks on healthcare in conflict, and the exploitation of women working in under-funded health systems.
Please share any publications or resources from your work that would like to highlight
https://www.virago.co.uk/titles/sophie-harman/sick-of-it/9780349017228/
https://mubi.com/en/gb/films/pili
https://www.mqup.ca/seeing-politics-products-9780773557314.php
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2015.1108827