Genderspezifische Entwicklungspolitiken und Bevölkerungsdiskurse: Das Konzept der „Sexuellen und Reproduktiven Gesundheit und Rechte“ aus postkolonialer Perspektive

Abstract

Abstract

Gender-oriented development policies and population discourses: The concept of „Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights“ in postcolonial perspective. The liberal colonial reforms of the Wilhelminian Reich marked the first appearance of the concept of „help“ focussing explicitly on indigenous women and their reproductive abilities. This article discusses to what extent these reforms can serve as a departure point for a critical reading of present women-oriented development policies and practices, which have been formed in the aftermath of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. Both reform events „discovered“ women as a specific field of intervention, connecting demographic and developmental discourses. While exploring these two interrelated but historically separate incidents does not allow all the complexities of colonial and present politics to be taken into account, it does allow for certain continuities/transformations in (neo-) colonial population politics to be highlighted. The article argues that an analysis of German development programs and discourses helps determine whether or not the ICPD’s core concept of „Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights“ (SRHR) represents a neo-liberal and neo-colonial instrument of governing the „other“.