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Project background
Project background
Date Range: 2019 - 2022
Funding Body: Royal Society of New Zealand
Project Team:
Dr Tracy Morison - Project Leader
Dr Jade Le Grice - Associate Investigator
Collaborators:
Prof Catriona Macleod - International Associate Investigator
Yanela Ndabula - International Associate Investigator
Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) is seen as one of the most promising developments for public health and women’s rights in the last decade. In Aotearoa/New Zealand LARC has been met with much enthusiasm. There have been efforts to increase access and uptake. Amid this enthusiasm, less attention has been given to women’s reproductive autonomy or their own perspectives on LARC. As a result, the role of power relations remains overlooked and under-theorised, as do the politics surrounding LARC and reproductive health in Aotearoa. This provides an ideal case study to generate local data including women’s perspectives, as well as to extend the framework of Reproductive Justice. This is a more holistic framework for understanding reproductive health issues that has significant potential for application in Aotearoa. To do this, the research will seek to highlight questions of power and agency in the provision of LARC in Aotearoa and explore how these insights can contribute to the theoretical development of the reproductive justice framework, both locally and transnationally.
The research team
The research team
Dr Tracy Morison, Massey University
Dr Tracy Morison, Massey University
I teach Health Psychology and Social Psychology in the School of Psychology at Massey University and have been an honorary research associate of the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction programme at Rhodes University (South Africa) since 2012. My research is concerned with the ways that the social context and power relations shape people's sexual and reproductive choices and practices.
You can access my publications on Google Scholar and retrieve open access versions from Academia.edu.
Dr Jade Le Grice, Auckland University
Dr Jade Le Grice, Auckland University
I te taha o tōku whaea ko Ngātokimatawhaorua te waka / Ko Hokianga nui a Kupe te moana. / Ko ōku maunga karangaranga ko Rakautapu me Whiria. / Ko Te Rarawa, me Ngāpuhi te iwi / Ko Ngai Tupoto, Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Wharara, Te Pouka ngā hapū / No Motukaraka me Pakanae ngā marae. / I te taha o tōku matua he Pākehā, Devonport.
My research approach situates mātauranga Māori, the diversity of Māori culture and identity, and the lived experiences of Māori people as legitimate within our local psychology context. It also involves interfacing with key stakeholders and agents of change to maximise opportunities for praxis, social and institutional change. My research applies this approach to the context of reproductive decision making, reproductive justice and inter-related domains of abortion, sexuality education, contraception, reproductive health, and maternity.
South African collaborators: Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction, Rhodes University, South Africa
To enhance the contribution of the work, the findings of the project will be pooled (or 'triangulated') with data from an equivalent South African study—which is being conducted in South Africa by Yanela Ndabula and supervised by Prof Catriona Macleod. This will help to develop theory that is transferable beyond Aotearoa New Zealand.
Prof Catriona Macleod
Prof Catriona Macleod
Catriona Ida Macleod is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and chair of Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction at Rhodes University, South Africa. She is editor-in-chief of the international journal Feminism & Psychology. She has written extensively in national and international journals in relation to teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexuality education, pregnancy support, reproductive decision-making, sexual violence, youth sexualities, and contraception. She is author of the multi-award winning book ‘Adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion published by Routledge in 2011, co-author (with Tracy Morison) of the book Men’s pathways to parenthood, published by HSRC Press, 2015, lead editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Ethics in Critical Research, published by Palgrave, 2018, and co-author (with Pedro Pinto) of the book A Genealogy of Puberty Science, published by Routledge, 2019.
Yanela Ndabula
Yanela Ndabula
Yanela is a longstanding and valuable member of the Critical Stiudies in Sexualities and Reproduction Research Unit. In 2017, Yanela completed her Master's thesis entitled "Sistering and sexual socialisation: A psychosocial study of Xhosa women's 'sex and reproduction talk' with their sisters", supervised by Professor Lisa Saville Young and Distinguished Professor Catriona Macleod. For her presentation of this work at PsySSA's first Pan African Psychology Congress, Yanela was awarded the Sexuality and Gender Division/ Feminism and Psychology Student Presentation Award. Currently, she is undertaking her PhD on constructions of women who use long acting reversible contraceptives in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.
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