About Us
A Brief History
Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) launched in 2002 as the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy (IWGSSP) and its name was changed to Sexuality Policy Watch in 2006.
Since its early days, SPW has been engaged in strategic analysis, research, and training. Its program includes: periodical assessments of global trends in gender and sexuality politics; engagement in political activism in transnational arenas, such as the UN; building partnerships with a wide range of actors working in the field of gender and sexuality-related rights.
SPW meeting in Toronto, 2006
Research, Strategic Analysis and Training
SPW Meeting in NY, 2004
In 2004, SPW published the outcome of its first research project: “Global Implications of U.S. Domestic and International Policies on Sexuality” (Girard), which examined the implications of US domestic and international policies on sexuality at the beginning of the Bush administration. The report was launched in a side event during the ECLAC Regional Conference that marked the 10th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Side event in Porto Rico, 2004
Between 2004 and 2007 SPW completed its first transnational research project, that examined sexual politics dynamics in eight countries – Brazil, Egypt, India, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam – and two global institutions: the United Nations and the World Bank. The outcome, SexPolitics: Reports from the Frontlines is also available in Spanish (Políticas sobre Sexualidad: Reportes desde las líneas del frente).
SPW meeting in Rio de Janeiro, 2005
Launch of “SexPolitics” in Lima, Peru.
While this transnational research was underway, Sonia Corrêa, Richard Parker and Rosalind Petchesky were engaged in a parallel project that resulted in the book Sexuality, Health and Human Rights, published by Routledge, and launched in 2008.
Launching ‘SexPolitics: Reports from the Frontlines’ in Mexico City
Between 2009 and 2014, another global research project was developed that encompassed three Regional Dialogues on Sexuality and (Geo)Politics, in Asia (2009), Latin America (2009), and Africa (2010), and an inter-regional meeting held in Rio de Janeiro (2011). This effort resulted in three publications: the e-book in Spanish “Diálogos Regionales sobre Sexualidad y Geopolítica”, and the two edited digital volumes Sexuality and Politics: Regional Dialogues from the Global South Vol. I and Vol. II.
Asia Regional Dialogue (Hanoi, 2009)
Latin America Regional Dialogue – Brazilian National Meeting (2009)
In parallel with the Regional Dialogues, SPW published in 2015 a translation to Spanish of Rafael de la Dehesa’s book on sexual rights movements in Mexico and Brasil: Incursiones queer en la esfera pública, Movimientos por los derechos sexuales en México y Brasil. This project was carried out in partnership with the Gender Studies Program of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM).
In 2013, SPW implemented two training programs focusing on how sexuality theory and research can shape meaningful social change. Participants were selected from all regions, but priority was given to the Global South. The faculty was constituted by SPW members, partners, and collaborators.
The first workshop took place in Rio in March 2013 with 18 young researchers and activists from Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Trinidad & Tobago, United States and Venezuela and its final report can be assessed here.
SPW’s first Training Program in Rio, 2013
A second workshop was held in Buenos Aires in August that same year, right before the Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS). It engaged participants from Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and the United States.
SPW’s second Training Program in Buenos Aires (2013)
Between 2013 and 2015, in collaboration with partners from the Global South and the US, SPW began a new line of work to examine how the emergence of new powers – Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – intersected with the politics of sexuality and human rights. The project was entitled Emerging Powers, Sexuality and Human Rights and resulted in two Working Papers and a series of videos documenting a civil society forum organized in parallel to the VI Brics Meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil (July 2014). In 2015, the preliminary outcomes of the research were presented at a seminar held at Wits University in Johannesburg.
In 2015, SPW began a new cycle of transnational analysis that looked back and updated the outcomes of SexPolitics: Reports from the Frontlines, from 2007. This new project was titled SexPolitics: Mapping Key Trends and Tensions in the Early 21st Century. The project involved a group of 30 researchers and activists who gathered at a meeting in Durban, South Africa, in July 2016, who discussed preliminary draft papers. Mark Gevisser, one of the invited commentators, wrote an insightful overview of the meeting debates.
Durban meeting in 2016
This project lasted until 2017 resulting in four main outcomes. The first was the working paper The Catholic Church’s Legal Strategies The Re-Naturalization Of Law And The Religious Embedding Of Citizenship, authored by Juan Marco Vaggione. The second publication titled Sex at Dusk and The Mourning After: Sexuality Policy in The United States in The Years of Obama, authored by Susana T. Fried and Cynthia Rothschild updated the very first SPW report on domestic and international US sexuality policies, examining what happened during the Obama administration. The third e-book addresses a diverse range of critical issues in gender and sexual politics – sex work, abortion rights, legal developments – and the fourth volume looks into the dynamics of gender and sexual politics in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and China.
Then, in 2018, SPW launched its new line of work to systematically examine anti-gender politics in Latin America. The project began with the translation to Spanish of selected papers of the special issue of Gender and Religion: “Habemus Gender! The Catholic Church and Gender Ideology“. In 2019, a series of videos was launched that summarized the preliminary results of the regional research project on anti-gender politics in nine countries and the OAS. In February 2020, the final results of these studies were published in Spanish, later in early 2021 the summaries of case studies were published in Portuguese and English. In March 2022, another round of studies examining anti-gender politics in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America was published. The new publication includes seven country case studies and the OAS.
G&PAL meetings in Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, 2018 and São Paulo, 2019
This project continues, mostly focusing on Latin America and Brazil, but not exclusively. In 2022, in partnership with four regional networks – Akahata, Promsex, Puentes/Bridges, Synergia – a group was established to enable periodical debates on pending and emerging issues. Since July 2022, 10 debates were held on a variety of topics, such as essentialist feminisms streams, regional political context and trends, and the mega electoral cycle of 2024.
Even though the main focus of this research program is Latin America, dialogues and connections exist with similar efforts underway in other contexts, in particular the US and Europe. In 2023, in partnership with the AHRC project led by the Gender Department of the London School of Economics (LSE) on Transnational ‘Anti-Gender’ Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions, SPW organized a Latin America regional seminar in Rio de Janeiro. The highlights of all panels are summarized on our YouTube channel.
Furthermore, given the scale and drastic effects of anti-gender politics in Brazil during the Bolsonaro government (2019-2022), SPW has also devoted substantive energy to critically examining national trends and to developing products for Brazilian audiences. Additional analyses have been performed concerning the translation of anti-gender ideology to State grammar and public policies, such as the 2021 report Anti-gender offensives in Brazil, submitted to the United Nations Independent Expert Mandate on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Human Rights by a group of Brazilian civil society organizations. Another publication examining all four years of the Bolsonaro government is also under development.
Launching the 1st edition of the Small Dictionary of Ambiguous Terms of the Current Political Debate (May 2022)
Yet more significantly, in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), SPW has developed a pioneering new project. This new effort was aimed at analyzing and translating into friendly language the genealogies, motivations, and effects of the “new vocabulary” propagated by ultraconservatives and ultra-right politics. Its outcome was the Small Dictionary of Ambiguous Terms of the Current Political Debate. The first edition launched in May 2022 with eight entries and was complemented with additional six entries by November 2023, as follows: “Ideology”; “Cultural Marxism”; “Political Correctness”; “Globalism”; “Gender Ideology”; “Feminism”; “Gender-Neutral Language”; “Identitarianism”; “Reverse Racism”; “Cristophobia”; “Patriotism”; “Good Citizen”; “Freedom”; “Family”.
This project continues unfolding into new exercises of translation. In partnership with Unicamp’s Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism, a podcast series is being produced based on the content of the Small Dictionary. Another partnership has been established with two progressive evangelical networks to also translate the contents of the Small Dictionary into social media products and educational materials. Lastly, a joint project is also under development in partnership with the Department of Language and Culture of the University of Los Andes, in Bogota, to adapt the Dictionary to the Colombian political and cultural context.
The new SPW website
In 2024, to mark the 20th anniversary of our first research report, the SPW website was redesigned and relaunched. The new platform makes it more easy to identify and access all the materials we have produced since 2004, but also a much wider production of a vast range of other institutions and individual authors working on research, analysis and activism in the realms of gender, sexuality, politics and human rights. Our archive contains a wealth of information on past as well as contemporary gender and sexuality politics landscapes, from a transnational perspective. It also offers pathways for retracing the complicated routes connecting past trends and present conditions in which these matters are more critical and relevant as ever in relation to wider rights claims for equality, freedom, social, racial and ethnic justice, but also for the preservation and improvement of democratic conditions under which these struggles can continue.
Due to the scope of our work, SPW publishes in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. This is reflected in the design of our website. Part of the content published, such as our regular newsletter and relevant research reports, are available in all three languages, but otherwise the subject matters vary accordingly.
