Transformative Topics March

In recognition that March is Women's History Month and March 8th was International Women's Day, we feature the work by Laurel Steinfield, Girish Ramani, Ronald Paul Hill, and Rehana Paul entitled "An examination of legality of global abortion services and the genesis of public policy" featured in Business and Politics."

Here, Laurel and Ron reflect on what motivated this article and its journey to publication:

The initial idea for the article came about when Ron, working with Rehana—an undergraduate student passionate about human rights—approached Laurel about writing an article on abortion rights. Laurel was very well versed in the gender justice/injustice literature, having been on some of the initial gender justice tracks at TCR. Like Ron and Rehana, a key human right that was of concern to Laurel was women's reproductive rights. Notably, this work started before Roe vs Wade was under threat of being overturned, but Ron had the foresight to see the writing on the walls.

The article scarily predicts that women's reproductive rights are tied closely not only to gender equality but also moral freedom and democracy. The closer a country is to an authoritarian country that limits moral freedoms, the higher gender inequality will be and the greater the restrictions will be on women's reproductive rights. The model has critical components that we are now witnesses in real life as critical to securing women's rights.

Given our own experiences of working in the human rights and gender (in)equity space in various places around the world, we had initial premises on what might matter. But coming up with the variables to include was a difficult task as we had to both balance availability of data for the most countries possible, with variables that fit what we predicted would matter. Rehana spent hours collating datasets on socioeconomic, cultural, and governance indicators we could use while Garnish performed the critical analysis to verify the significance of our proposed model.

The second difficulty occurred when writing up the article. How does one present these issues in an unbiased way when they are so integral to lived experiences of people? Laurel and Ron have previously worked with vulnerable communities and have a desire to use research for social good. It's why we belong to TCR. Yet time after time, as we submitted the article to various journey, it kept getting rejected as reviewers not only questioned the model but also questioned the feminist underpinnings that clearly emerge in the discussion section that advocates for a more integrative gender sensitive approach to policies. And rather than giving us an opportunity to revise and resubmit, it was continually rejected.

The experience in writing this article made evident how journals play a critical role as knowledge gatekeepers and can either choose to allow avenues for critical topics to surface or to be silenced. When things are in style, we seem to get an upswing. When things are too risky, no longer in fad, and/or too politicized, they become harder to get published.

We thank TCR's Transformative Topics Newsletter for giving us an opportunity to make apparent a model that forecasted much of what we see today. We hope it allows us all to stop, think, and question: What is at risk when we start to erode women's rights? Women's rights are human rights.

Read: Steinfield, Laurel, Girish Ramani, Ronald Paul Hill, and Rehana Paul. (2023) "An examination of legality of global abortion services and the genesis of public policy." Business and Politics 25 (1): 34-52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/bap.2022.23

Abstract:

Legality of abortion has been one of the most controversial political initiatives in modern times, which also impacts the healthcare delivery system especially for women. The debate often devolves into disagreement on either access to services on demand from healthcare providers or service refusal regardless of the circumstances. However, the reality is different from this bipolar conversation. Instead, it varies depending upon location of the potential abortion recipient and a host of factors associated with nation-states. Thus, our purpose is to reveal different legislative protocols that lead to or inhibit availability of this aspect of women's reproductive rights, and to empirically determine what are the underlying series of factors that drive these policy decisions. Together they reveal a complex mosaic of fundamental principles that are rarely considered when formulating public policy. We hope our research across nations will help healthcare providers and policy makers recognize the genealogy of options and opportunities as they continue to debate abortion's provision to women within healthcare systems.

Check out some of the initial gender justice/injustice work that emerged from the TCR dialogical conferences:

Foundational article: Hein, Wendy, Laurel Steinfield, Nacima Ourahmoune, Catherine A. Coleman, Linda Tuncay Zayer, and Jon Littlefield. "Gender justice and the market: a transformative consumer research perspective." Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 35, no. 2 (2016): 223-236. https://doi.org/10.1509/jppm.15.146

Articulation of power: Steinfield, Laurel A., Catherine A. Coleman, Linda Tuncay Zayer, Nacima Ourahmoune, and Wendy Hein. "Power logics of consumers’ gendered (in) justices: reading reproductive health interventions through the transformative gender justice framework." Consumption Markets & Culture 22, no. 4 (2019): 406-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2018.1512250

Extension into Intersectionality: Steinfield, Laurel, Minita Sanghvi, Linda Tuncay Zayer, Catherine A. Coleman, Nacima Ourahmoune, Robert L. Harrison, Wendy Hein, and Jan Brace-Govan. "Transformative intersectionality: Moving business towards a critical praxis." Journal of Business Research 100 (2019): 366-375.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.12.031