Introduction

Gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health affect all areas of development, from human wellbeing to economic growth. Living a life free from violence and with autonomy over one's own body and sexuality are fundamental human rights. The fact that these are so frequently denied to girls and women is one reason why the feminist movement in Latin America, whose campaign priorities above all deal with tackling femicide and impunity, and guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights, is growing exponentially (El País, 2020; Tesoriero, 2020).

Understanding the significance of the body – especially the female body – is a fundamental element of feminism because the level of autonomy and dignity we have in relation to our bodies deeply impacts upon all areas of life. This is more pronounced for people living in ‘marginalised bodies’ (Shildrick and Price, 2017: 2). How bodies are seen socially, culturally and politically contributes to the bases of discrimination that different groups face. It means that characteristics such as race, class and disability ‘intersect to constitute particular ways of seeing, and of devaluing, bodies … whilst all such marginalised bodies are potentially unsettling, what is at issue for women specifically is that, supposedly, the female body is intrinsically unpredictable, leaky and disruptive’ (Shildrick and Price, 2017: 2). With this in mind, then, we can begin to understand the roots of why some people – above all, women and girls – enjoy less rights and policy protection with regards to their bodies.

There are risks in eliding women's human rights into struggles associated with the body and physical integrity rights. Miller (2004) argues that it constructs women not as citizens but as victims. We agree that reducing girls and women to their bodies can be harmful, but having control over one's own body is an essential starting point to enable other freedoms and opportunities. Here, then, what we want to do is show is how the failure to respect and uphold women and girls’ bodily rights impacts upon their experience and opportunities in all other realms of life, including health, education and labour. These themes are misclassified as ‘private’ versus ‘public’, which misses the complex interplay between them.