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A ROBUST CHARACTER WORKING FOR THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS: JOAN
DUNLOP
Bahar TANER *
Emel YİĞİTCEOĞLU **
Introduction
Joan (Banks) Dunlop is an influential figure in the realization of the movement for sexual and
reproductive health and rights. She has a worldwide reputation with her great efforts leading the
United Nations define a woman’s right to say no to sex as an essential human right. In this article, the
early life and professional life of Joan Dunlop will be investigated and evaluated within the context of
her contributions to the health of women and welfare.
Her early life
Joan Dunlop was born in London on May 20, 1934, and was brought up in Surrey, in the suburbs
of London. 1 Her father was a deputy chairman in the British Petroleum. Her mother was coming from
a wealthy American family. She inherited her self‐confidence, motivation and unlimited energy from
her mother’s American family heritage.
She got her high school education at Queen Anne’s School in Caversham in United Kingdom. After
she got her certificate from Queen’s Secretarial College in London, endowed with secretarial skills,
she worked in the USA for a while. A couple of years later, she returned to England and worked for
BBC. During this time, as a result of a relationship with a colleague, she had to experience an illegal
abortion. This experience reflected the period when a number of women all around the world were
coming across with an illegal abortion in the 1950’s and early 1960’s and it was also her biggest
motive about the problem of abortion. 2
Dunlop’s marriages to Peter Dunlop and Edward Deagle ended in divorce. She had no children
from these marriages. She died at the age of 78 in 2012. 3 She came back to New York in the
beginnings of 1960’s with an ambition to work for the Ford Foundation that has the mission of
strengthening democratic values, diminishing poverty and injustice, promoting international
cooperation and advancing human achievement, this being her first experience in politics. Later on,
her position as the director of the Budget under New York City in 1971 was a milestone in her career,
endowing her with the art of managing talent. 4
Stepping into women’s health issues and welfare
In 1972, Dunlop started working in Rockefeller family office, where she was given the task of
conducting studies in three areas: abortion, international population issues and the quality of sex
education in the United States. John D. Rockefeller hired her as she was highly qualified for this
position, partially thinking her abortion experience would contribute to his abortion politics within
the context of population policy. At the beginning, she concentrated deeply on the population field
by following the meetings, reading the literature, learning about the experiences of the practitioners.
Later on, she worked a lot to make the abortion issue to be assessed beyond contraceptive
technology and to be regarded as the center of women’s lives. 5
1974 was declared as “World Population Year” by the United Nations and a population
conference was scheduled in Bucharest. In the conference which was supported by John D.
Rockefeller’s office to a large extent, women’s empowerment was emphasized through the
implementation of the intensive improvement efforts in the existing population policies. Adrienne
Germain, president emerita of the International Women’s Health Coalition commented on
Rockefeller’s speech as;
*
Mersin University - Mersin, Turkey
**
Mersin University - Mersin, Turkey