Human Rights in the Global Menstrual Movement: Between Tokenism and Emancipatory Promise
Location:
Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society.
23 Buccleuth Place,
George Square
Date/time
Thu 22 February 2024
14:00-15:30
About the event
As menstruation is gaining increasing attention, the language of human rights looms large. My talk explores this framing and the promises, pitfalls, and the renewed potential of human rights. Many global organizations adopt a reductionist understanding and instrumentalize human rights to advance narrow, technical fixes in the form of menstrual products and hygiene interventions. However, the menstrual movement is not monolithic, and other groups build on a holistic understanding to advance menstrual justice. My talk centers these contestations and contradictions, tensions and transformations to discern whether human rights can serve as a tool to advance menstrual justice.
About the speaker
Dr Inga Winkler is an Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at the Central European University in Vienna, Austria. Her research on menstruation focuses on three overlapping strands: evaluating policy developments; understanding social mobilization; and centering the lived experiences of people who menstruate and how they intersect with different forms of marginalization. She is the co-editor of the field-defining Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies and co-chair of the standing seminar on Menstruation & Society at Columbia University. She previously taught and researched at Columbia, NYU, and Berkeley in the US and Stellenbosch in South Africa and worked as human rights advisor on water and sanitation in the context of the United Nations.
Running order
Prof Winkler’s talk will be followed by a talk by Rebecca Sanaeikia on Trans Data Ethics in Healthcare.
This event is hosted by the Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society (CBSS) as part of the CBSS seminar series with support from the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law (MI)
This event is in person only.