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Ravi Verma

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Ravi Verma
Ravi
Verma
Regional Director, Asia Regional Office
Bio: 

Ravi Verma is regional director for the International Center for Research on Women's (ICRW) Asia Regional Office in New Delhi, India. In this role, Verma leads ICRW’s local and regional efforts to conduct research, provide technical support, build capacity and partake in policy dialogue on an array of issues, including adolescent girls, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, engaging men and boys and economic development.

Verma brings more than 25 years of programmatic research experience in reproductive health, gender mainstreaming and HIV in South Asia. Prior to joining ICRW in 2007, he was a program associate with Population Council/Horizons, where he collaborated with partners to design, implement and evaluate innovative operations research projects on gender and HIV. For more than 20 years, he was a professor in the department of population policies and programs at the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai, India. While there, Verma managed multi-faceted, collaborative intervention research projects and conducted national studies on reproductive health, fertility, family planning and sexual behaviors.

Expertise: 

HIV and AIDS, Engaging Men and Boys, Population and Reproductive Health, Violence Against Women

Languages Spoken: 

English, Hindi, Marathi

Education: 

Verma holds a doctorate in social sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master's in psychology from the University of Allahabad in India.

Sarah Degnan Kambou

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Sarah Degnan Kambou president International Center for Research on Women
Sarah
Degnan Kambou
President, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Bio: 

As the President of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Dr. Sarah Degnan Kambou leads a global research institute that focuses on realizing women’s empowerment and gender equality to alleviate poverty worldwide. Her expertise centers on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS and adolescent health and livelihoods.  Dr. Degnan Kambou has served as a technical advisor to multilaterals, leading corporations and governments seeking to integrate gender into policies, programs and services that will advance the status of women and girls around the world.

Dr. Degnan Kambou is a development practitioner, who believes that research is in and of itself a parallel process of social change. Under her leadership, platforms such as ICRW’s Site for Intensive Learning and Action in Mumbai, India, leverage research as a means to foster local ownership, harness local capacity, and ultimately reposition women and youth in community development efforts.

In December of 2012, President Obama named Dr. Degnan Kambou to the President’s Global Development Council. Also in 2012, Dr. Degnan Kambou was named by former President Clinton as an Advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2010, Dr. Degnan Kambou was appointed by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to represent ICRW on the U.S. Commission to UNESCO. She was honored in 2010 with Boston University's School of Public Health's Distinguished Alumni Award for her contributions to the field of public health, and in 2011 as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influential and inspiring women.

As a development professional, Dr. Degnan Kambou has worked for more than 27 years in Asia, Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa. For more than a decade, Dr. Degnan Kambou lived in sub-Saharan Africa, managing signature programs for CARE.  Through her work, she focused on addressing social and economic vulnerability of marginalized populations, strengthening civil society in post-conflict settings and participatory development of underserved urban and rural communities. Prior to her work in Africa, Degnan Kambou managed the Center for International Health, which she co-founded in 1987, at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Dr. Degnan Kambou lives in Maryland with her husband, a senior economist at the World Bank.  They have two children, aged 19 and 22. 

Expertise: 

HIV and AIDS, Reproductive Health, Adolescents

Languages Spoken: 

English (native), French (fluent)

Education: 

Kambou holds a doctorate in international health policy and a master’s in public health from Boston University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in French from the University of Connecticut.

PDF Bio: 
application/pdf iconSarah Degnan Kambou Official Bio 2013.pdf

Women's Reproductive Choices and Behaviors: A Study in Madhya Pradesh, India

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Women’s control over their own childbearing is a key component of reproductive health and rights. In order to understand the full range of factors that define women’s options regarding childbearing, ICRW designed an innovative, large-scale, household-based study in Madhya Pradesh, India to explore the domestic, societal, service-related and policy-related context of women’s reproductive choices and behaviors.

In partnership with the International Institute for Population Studies, Mumbai, and the Government Medical College, Nagpur, ICRW designed and developed an innovative data collection approach through a survey that combined a unique narrative interviewing technique with rigorous quantitative survey methodology. Data collection took place between 2000 and 2002, beginning with a qualitative phase and culminating in a large-scale, representative survey. In total, data were collected on 11,341 individual pregnancies from 2,444 women aged 15 to 39, providing a unique insight into women’s entire reproductive lives. This approach was shown to produce higher quality and more detailed data than standard household surveys.  

The following central research questions were explored:

  • How are women’s reproductive choices and behaviors manifested in the decision-making processes that determine contraceptive use, the occurrence of unwanted pregnancies and the resolution of unwanted pregnancies?
  • Under what circumstances are the actions that women take – or fail to take – indicative of their ability to formulate and act upon reproductive choices?

Findings from the data show that the vast majority of women had limited reproductive choices and rights despite the fact that abortion has been legal in India since 1972. The data also point to the unequivocal link between contraceptive access and abortion. Further analysis of the data explores the role of household members in shaping women’s reproductive behavior and better understanding women’s decision-making process regarding fertility control.

The data collection and research were funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation.

Duration: 
1999 to 2009
Location(s): 
India

Exploring Women’s Reproductive Histories

Exploring Women’s Reproductive Histories
A Survey Instrument

International Center for Research on Women
2002

Understanding what determines a woman’s reproductive choices and behaviors, particularly in terms of family planning, can inform the development of more effective programs and policies to improve their lives.   

With an aim to design better measurement tools for gathering data on the determinants of women’s reproductive behaviors, ICRW and partners implemented an innovative, large-scale, household-based study in Madhya Pradesh, India. Our survey approach was found to produce higher quality and more detailed data than standard household surveys. In particular, this approach appears to reduce the under-reporting of abortion, which has been legal in India since 1972, while also collecting information that allows for a more comprehensive exploration of the ways in which different factors in women’s lives intersect to shape their reproductive behavior.

This survey instrument combines a unique narrative interviewing technique with rigorous quantitative survey methodology that allows women to report on their reproductive lives within the context of a natural storytelling process.  The questionnaire’s structure, including both the types and sequencing of questions, was deliberately designed to mimic a conversational flow, which differentiates it from traditional survey approaches. Findings from the study are published in Realizing Reproductive Rights and Choice.

(1.27 MB)

We encourage the use and dissemination of our publications for non-commercial, educational purposes. Portions may be reproduced with acknowledgment to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). For questions, please contact publications@icrw.org; or (202) 797-0007.

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