This article explores how cross-cultural research on sexual and reproductive rights can be vulnerable to ethnocentrism, and in what way ethnocentrism can be reduced in such research. Against the background of feminist debate on equality and difference, it discusses how the concepts of sexual and reproductive rights, within the parameters of development discourse, can reinforce hierarchical dichotomies of North–South, modern–traditional and actor–structure, and undervalue southern women's agency. An analytical framework that combines the entitlement approach and the three-dimensional model of gender is proposed to diminish ethnocentrism and counter homogenization and generalization. This framework aims at balancing agency, actor and structure, and allowing for differences, heterogeneity and contradictions.
Abu-Lughod, Lila (1993) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–42 in Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2.
Andermahr, S., T. Lovell and C. Wolkowitz (1997) A Concise Glossary of Feminist Theory. London, New York, Sydney and Auckland: Arnold.
3.
Appelman, S. and F. Reysoo (1994) Everything You Always Wanted to Know... Lexicon and Comments on the New Population Concepts from a Gender Perspective. Oegstgeest: Vrouwenberaad Ontwikkelingssamenwerking.
4.
Bandarage, A. (1997) Women, Population and Global Crisis. London and New York: Zed Books.
5.
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (1999) Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights. New York: CRLP.
Davids, Tine and Francien van Driel (1999) ‘Van vrouwenstrijd wereldwijd naar meerstemmigheid en diversiteit’, pp. 406–420 in P. Hoebink, D. Haude and F. van der Velden (eds) Doorlopers en breuklijnen van globalisering, emancipatie en verzet. Assen: Van Gorcum.
8.
Davids, Tine and Francien van Driel (2001) ‘Globalization and Gender: Beyond Dichotomies’, pp. 153–175 in F.J. Schuurman (ed.) Globalization and Development Studies: Challenges for the 21st Century. London: Sage/Amsterdam: Thela.
9.
Dixon-Mueller, Ruth (1993a) ‘The Sexuality Connection in Reproductive Health’, Studies in Family Planning24(5): 269–282.
10.
Dixon-Mueller, Ruth (1993b) ‘Human Rights, Women's Rights and Reproductive Freedom: The Evolution of Ideas’, pp. 3–27 in Population Policy and Women's Rights: Transforming Reproductive Choice. Westport, CT and London: Praeger.
11.
Gupta, J.A. (1996) New Freedoms, New Dependencies: New Reproductive Technologies, Women's Health and Autonomy. Leiden: University of Leiden Press.
12.
Harding, Sandra (1986) ‘From the Woman Question in Science to the Science Question in Feminism’, pp. 15–29 in S. Harding (ed.) The Science Question in Feminism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
13.
Huizer, Gerrit (1999) Engagement, emancipatie en sociale wetenschappen in een mondiaal perspectief. Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen.
14.
Jansen, Willy (1989) ‘Ethnocentrism in the Study of Algerian Women’, pp. 280–310 in A. Angerman, G. Binnema, A. Keunen, V. Poels and J. Zirkzee (eds) Current Issues in Women's History. London: Routledge.
15.
Keysers, Loes (1994) ‘Women's Reproductive Rights and Men's Reproductive Responsibilities’, paper presented in workshop II, Workshop Series at the NGO Forum of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, Egypt, 11 September.
16.
Mies, Maria (1983) ‘Towards a Methodology for Feminist Research’, pp. 117–139 in G. Bowels and R.D. Klein (eds) Theories of Women's Studies. London: Kegan Paul.
17.
Mohanty, C. (1993) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse’, pp. 51–80 in C. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
18.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan (2000) ‘After Post-Development’, Third World Quarterly21(2): 175–191.
19.
Nencel, Lorraine (1999) ‘Ongezegd, onverteld, onuitgesproken: gestalte geven aan gender in een veldwerk-praktijk’, Tijdsschrift voor Genderstudies2(1): 15–26.
20.
Oloka-Onyango, J. and S. Tamale (1995) ‘The Personal is Political, or Why Women's Rights Are Indeed Human Rights: An African Perspective on International Feminism’, Human Rights Quarterly17: 691–731.
21.
Papanek, Hanna (1990) ‘To Each Less than She Needs, to Each More than She Can Do: Allocations, Entitlements and Value’, pp. 162–181 in I. Tinker (ed.) Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
22.
Parpart, J. (1995) ‘Deconstructing the Development Expert: Gender, Development and the “Vulnerable Groups” ’, pp. 221–243 in J. Parpart and M.H. Marchand (eds) Feminism, Postmodernism, Development. London: Routledge.
23.
Petchesky, Rosalind (1998) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–30 in R. Petchesky and K. Judd (eds) Negotiating Reproductive Rights. London and New York: Zed Books.
24.
Richter, Judith (1994) ‘Invited Abuse: Population Control and Contraceptive Research’, EPD-EntwicklungspolitikJuly: 27–32.
25.
Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
26.
Schrijvers, Joke (1991) ‘Dialectics of a Dialogical Ideal: Studying Down, Studying Sideways and Studying Up’, pp. 162–179 in L. Nencel and P. Pels (eds) Constructing Knowledge: Authority and Critique in Social Science. London, Newbury Park, CA and New Delhi: Sage.
27.
Scott, Joan (1988) ‘Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies14(1): 33–50.
28.
Scott, Joan (1991) ‘Gender as a Useful Category in Historical Analysis’, pp. 13–37 in A. Rao (ed.) Women's Studies International, Nairobi and Beyond. New York: The Feminist Press at the University of New York.
29.
Sen, Amartya K. (1990) ‘Gender and Cooperative Conflict’, pp. 123–149 in I. Tinker (ed.) Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
30.
Sen, Amartya K. (1995) ‘Food, Economics and Entitlement’, pp. 50–68 in J.A. DrÈze and A. Hussain (eds) The Political Economy of Hunger: Selected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
31.
Sztompka, Piotr (1993) The Sociology of Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
32.
Van Eerdewijk, Anouka (1998) Economic Empowerment of Women: Experiences of Clients of the Uganda Women's Finance and Credit Trust, occasional paper. Nijmegen: Derde Wereld Centrum (Third World Centre).
33.
Villarreal, Magdalena (1994) Wielding and Yielding: Power, Subordination and Gender Identity in the Context of a Mexican Development Project. Wageningen: Landbouw Universiteit Wageningen.
34.
Watkins, S.C. (1993) ‘If All We Knew about Women Was what We Read in “ Demography”, What Would We Know?’, Demography30(4): 551–577.
