2017 Jill Vickers Prize

Winner: Candace Johnson

2016 CPSA conference paper – Transnational Reproductive Rights Regimes in the Context of Zika Virus

Photo: Jill Vickers (Carleton University) and Candace Johnson (University of Guelph), CPSA President’s Dinner, May 31, 2017, Dim Sum King, Toronto.

Excerpt from jury report: This paper examines the political dimensions of the Zika virus in regard to maternal health. The virus itself is borderless, but policy to contain Zika is defined by state borders. Documenting the distinctive historical, cultural, and economic context of public policy in each state serves to undermine the apparent universality of pregnancy by highlighting the situated nature of the pregnant body and women’s experience. This paper is ambitious in scope, empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated. It is also a politically engaged paper that not only makes a compelling case for maternal health policy directives coming from the global North to address the complex social and biomedical sources of infection and maternal health by, fundamentally, putting women’s reproductive rights ahead of controlling mosquitos, but also the steps that need to be taken to create a women’s cross-border solidarity to pursue such policy.