Since the Second World War, most contemporary wars have taken place within countries and imposed overwhelming stressors on civilian populations. Women living in conflict may be particularly at risk of sexual and reproductive health concerns, including pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity that could have been prevented, a lack of access to health care goods and services, and conflict-related sexual violence. Conflict thus poses a serious challenge to development at the individual, household, community and national levels.

This doctoral dissertation in sociological demography investigates how the Colombian armed conflict has shaped women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It takes a mixed methods approach based on material from three sources: information about local conflict violence from the Uppsala Conflict Database Program, micro-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, and original interviews with stakeholders in women’s rights and peacebuilding in Colombia.

The thesis consists of four independent articles focused on different aspects of SRHR in relation to conflict.

Based on a Radical Reproductive Justice framework, Study I investigates how matters of sexuality and reproduction have gained political meaning with intersectional dimensions in the context of the Colombian armed conflict.

Studies II and III both explore how women’s family planning behavior relates to conflict. While the former looks at modern contraceptive use from a cross-sectional perspective, the latter takes a longitudinal approach to analyzing women’s uptake of sterilization, the only contraceptive method that represents a definitive stop to women’s reproductive careers.

In Study IV, the interlinkages between two forms of violent experiences are analyzed: exposure to armed conflict and intimate partner violence against women. The article also presents novel analyses of how victimized women’s relationships are affected by ongoing conflict.

Colombia is an interesting case to study due to its uniquely longstanding conflict since the mid-20th century, with high-quality data available since the late 1980s. The country’s ongoing peace process has had an unprecedented focus on gender and women’s rights. This yields a moment of opportunity for research efforts to contribute new evidence that may help guide transitional justice processes as well as comprehensive SRHR interventions. The thesis contributes to knowledge about gendered demographic and health outcomes of war, and how contextual factors such as violent conflict affects women’s lives and agency.