How Foundations' Field-Building Helped the Reproductive Health Movement

By Perrin Liana Elkind

Scholars have demonstrated that foundation grants channel social movements by

encouraging professionalization and favoring moderate tactics, but they have overlooked critical

mechanisms of foundation influence. Advancing Tim Bartley's (2007) field-building

framework, I identify new mechanisms-including grants and activities other than

grantmaking-through which five foundations helped channel the international Reproductive

Health movement between 1990 and 2005, shaping its composition, trajectory, and outcomes.

The first of its kind, this study combines an analysis of an original data set including 8,103 grants

made by five major philanthropic foundations from 1990-2005, interviews with foundation staff

and leadership, and archival data, with an historical narrative of the population field and the

Reproductive Health movement. I explain foundations' roles in the Reproductive Health

movement's successful campaign targeting the 1994 United Nations International Conference on

Population and Development (ICPD). There the movement transformed the population

field's frame from Family Planning-reducing fertility through increasing access to

contraceptives-to Reproductive Health-meeting women's broader reproductive health

needs and advancing gender equality.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1835710115
• ISBN13: 9781835710111
• Release Date: October 2023
• Publisher: Alihyd Hussain
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"