Episode 84

Allyship in Gender Justice

We explore what allyship really means in the fight for gender justice. Co-hosted by Ishrat Jahan from the Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Justice programme, the conversation unpacks how power, privilege, and positionality shape allyship, and how solidarity must move beyond tokenism to be truly transformative. Our guests reflect on allyship within health systems, across movements, and in the face of patriarchal and political backlash in Brazil and India. Part of our mini-series Backlash, Resistance and the Path to Gender Justice, this episode highlights lived experiences and fresh perspectives from long-standing gender justice advocates.

In this episode:

Ishrat Jahan - Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health at BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Ishrat’s research focuses on the intersection of gender, health, and environmental issues. Ishrat is involved in national and international projects exploring the impact of climate change on women’s health, adaptive practices in marginalised communities, and Global South-led curricula in higher education.

Dr. Abhijit Das - Consultant, SAHAYOG, India

Dr. Abhijit Das is a public health physician with over 35 years of work on gender equality and understanding harmful masculinities. He is a co-founder of the MenEngage Global Alliance and COPASAH, and has worked extensively on building bottom-up knowledge for health systems reform. He is currently an Independent Researcher and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Professor Cecilia Sardenberg - Professor of Anthropology and Feminist Studies, NEIM, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

Professor Cecilia Sardenberg is a Brazilian feminist scholar and activist who has worked at the intersection of academia and grassroots organising for more than five decades. She is one of the founders of NEIM, the Women’s Studies Research Centre at the Federal University of Bahia, and currently co-coordinates the Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Justice programme in Brazil.

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Transcript
Speaker:

Dr. Kim Ozano: Hello and welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science, a

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global health and development podcast that brings together researchers,

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practitioners, and community voices to share insights that drive positive change.

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Today, you're listening to our miniseries entitled Backlash, Resistance

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and the Path to Gender Justice.

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We are exploring how civic spaces are shrinking for those working in the

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gender justice field, and what resistance looks like in different contexts.

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Today is the third episode, and the focus is allyship.

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What does this mean?

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Who does it serve?

Abhijit Das:

Allyship is being considerate about others while

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understanding that you have a role to play in bringing about greater justice,

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solidarity, and equality in the world.

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Dr. Kim Ozano: So across this six part mini-series, we're hearing from two

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long-term gender justice programmes who are sharing lessons as they learn them.

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The first is funded by SIDA and led by IDS.

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It's called Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Justice and it's a six-year

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research programme aiming to create much needed new knowledge around the complex

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phenomena of patriarchal backlash.

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The programme's main countries of focus are Bangladesh, Brazil,

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India, Kenya, Lebanon and Uganda.

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The second programme is called Our Voices, Our Futures, and it's a Global

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South led initiative working to amplify the voices of structurally silenced

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women across Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Sudan, and Uganda.

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And that's funded by the Embassy of the Netherlands and coordinated by CREA.

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All of these episodes within this gender mini-series are co-hosted by

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researchers from these programmes and each conversation shares

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reflections from people on the front lines of gender justice struggles.

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So, a word of caution just before we begin the episode does include

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discussions of gender-based violence, attacks on reproductive rights

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and racism within health systems.

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So, take care while listening and step away if you need to.

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I'm Dr. Kim Ozano, and I'm joined today by our co-host Ishrat Jahan,

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who is from the Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Justice programme, and she

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brings experience of gender health and climate justice across South Asia.

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In addition, we're joined by two experienced voices in today's

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discussion, and collectively, they have decades of experience working

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in the gender justice field.

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The first is Dr. Abhijit Das, who is a public health physician and is a

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long-term advocate for gender equality with over 35 years of work challenging

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harmful masculinities in India and beyond.

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We are also joined by Professor Cecilia Sardenberg, who is a Brazilian

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feminist anthropologist and the co-coordinator of the Countering

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Backlash programme in Brazil.

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She has decades of experience combining academic research

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with grassroots activism.

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So, let's get started.

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Ishrat,

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Perhaps you could set us up for this episode by talking to us a little

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bit about what your understanding of allyship is in gender justice.

Ishrat Jahan:

It's so great to be back and I'm really excited

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to be a part of today's episode.

Ishrat Jahan:

Allyship is a little tricky for me, and I say this fully aware that I'm someone

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who's worked in gender, who's worked in women's issues, in the intersections

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of health, climate, what have you.

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So, you will think that I would be someone who knows exactly what allyship is, but

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I'd like to start off this episode by saying that I don't, especially because

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we live in such times where you face multiple crises from every direction.

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And while I get the sense that allyship is more important than ever, we need to be

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really talking about it in a critical way.

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We need to understand what it means from a very personal space because

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allyship is first and foremost a personal commitment, but it's also

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a collective community effort.

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So, what does that mean?

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How does that happen?

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I'm hoping today's conversation would give me some answers as well.

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So, there's a very interesting statistics from a 2019 report which is that 77%

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of men think that they are really good allies to women, that they're

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doing everything they can to support gender equality at home or at work.

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But only 41% of women agree that men around them are good allies.

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I think that's, that gap in terms of what allyship means to different

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people and why we need to be having this conversation in the first place.

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So, I think it's good to start the conversation from perhaps

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a more personal point of view.

Ishrat Jahan:

And I wanna ask Abhijit, what does the term allyship or

Ishrat Jahan:

being an ally mean to you?

Abhijit Das:

You know, allyship as you very correctly pointed out is

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all about a personal feeling or.

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Uh, I should say realisation because, and the listeners can't see me, I am

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an older male, very well educated.

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So, in my context in India, I am what you would call upper caste, upper class.

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So, I am all boxes ticked for what you would call privilege and, uh, to

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understand allyship, the other thing that you have, have to understand is

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the way power is distributed in society.

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Resources are distributed because of that power and how responsibilities,

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obligations, et cetera, get distributed because of various axis of power of class,

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caste, gender, sexual orientation, and in India, caste, ethnicity, et cetera.

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Now, if I have to be an ally to the overall journey of justice, which is in

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a way redistribution of power, where the opportunities and obligations get shared

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between different, uh, power groups, which are different social groups,

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different gender groups, different ethnic groups, one has to understand

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that as an individual who believes in allyship, I have to start sharing.

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I have to take commitment towards the equalisation, not only as a legal

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principle, not only as a principle which the state has to do, but something that

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I have to take individual commitment for.

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And for me, this is the beginning of the allyship journey.

Ishrat Jahan:

That's a fabulous take.

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Same question if I can throw to Cecilia?

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Cecilia Maria Bacellar Sardenberg: Okay, In Brazil, I am considered a privileged

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because I have a PhD and I had the opportunity to go abroad when I was 17

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years old, I, I won this scholarship, and I went to live in the United States,

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and then I lived there for many years, and I came back to Brazil as a professor.

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So I am in a privileged position, but my family's not that rich.

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Never been, just middle class.

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But I have been involved in several movements, in several struggles in Brazil.

Ishrat Jahan:

So allyship, you know, I'm not very familiar with this concept.

Ishrat Jahan:

We don't use it that much in Brazil, uh, with the term.

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But with the concept, yeah, that of solidarity, it's a fundamental

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principle in women's movements, you know, feminist movements in Brazil in

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particular, they express this solidarity in the maxim of sisterhood is powerful.

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The very notion of sisterhood implies solidarity, and that of extend your

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hand to bring your sister up to where you stand or even above, right?

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So I think the collective action perpetuates this, the emergence

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of networks of support among women and amplifying women's voices.

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And, and I think this is especially important, the context of gender

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justice , particularly in the case of confronting gender-based violence

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as well as, uh, in the health context when we consider obstetric violence.

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Brazil has legal abortion since 1940.

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Abortions are, are permitted in cases where the pregnancy is a result of rape,

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if the pregnancy, uh, brings a threat to women's life, and also in the case of

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where it is proved that the foetus has no possibility of life outside of the uterus.

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However, they've been moves to take these rights away from women So, uh, we've been

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working a lot in this area, and we've even wrote papers about the backlash.

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We have a very good health system in Brazil.

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However, racism is very strong within it.

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And, uh, we know that black women who go to deliver in these hospitals suffer

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discrimination and even violent treatment.

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So, uh, this is really important for us to exercise our solidarity

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in supporting women, supporting the black women's movements in

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Brazil to change the situation.

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What we have now started talking about is power, and something

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that when I think about all allyship or all the conversations that I've

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had in academia, just with friends in communities, a lot of the times when we

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talk about allyship, we don't take into account that we are also talking about

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power, privilege, and positionality.

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The three of us do tick some boxes of privilege.

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We are sitting here and speaking of allyship, but I think it's

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a good thing, Abhijit that you pointed out, your definition of

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allyship with positionality... and

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is no other way to talk about allyship.

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I'm very clear and to understand allyship further, what one has to understand is

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the way gender relationships are changing in the last 50 odd years because we

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cannot work with the same definition.

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I see the situation now, both in terms of health system aspirations, in terms

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of social relationships, and in terms of economic arrangements in the world, they

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have affected women and men differently.

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The changes that have taken place have affected poor men, excluded men,

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men from, uh, ethnic communities, which are marginalised, new groups

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of marginalised men where citizenship is being challenged every day.

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They are facing huge disadvantages as well, and this has a tremendous

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impact on their masculinities and their destructive potential.

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And when I talk of allyship and gender justice, it is impossible today sitting

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in 2025, to ignore the changes that have taken place in masculinity and how they're

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impacting gender justice, how they're impacting women's wellbeing, and not

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to consider relationships between men.

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Because gender is a relationship.

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It is a relationship between men and women.

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It is a relationship between sexual diversities.

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So, my earnest plea to feminists is to think about gender and think about

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how allyship can be built across sexual diversities, across gender

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diversities, across class diversities.

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And we have to be all aware of our positionality of power because whenever

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we have power, no matter what our gender sexual orientation is, if we do not

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share, if we do not try to understand who else is below us and how I can help

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them, allyship will become meaningless because what has happened today is that we

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have created new silos of identity-based politics who are fighting with each other.

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Ethnicity has created new silos which have created boundaries between groups

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that are not, uh, coming into solidarity.

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And each group with more and more rights is extremely conscious about their

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rights and start excluding others.

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So, we have new groups of people who are getting ignored, even by social groups.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think you bring up very, very important points.

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I think we're on the same wavelength.

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The question that comes to my mind is what is your take about how we

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can generate more transformative ways of establishing solidarity?

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Cecilia Maria Bacellar Sardenberg: I think first of all, that for, for me

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being an ally is being supportive and sensitive to other persons and group's

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needs, fragilities, which result from discrimination and marginalisation.

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We have a lot of men who are supportive and struggle with us, right.

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Machismo's still, very strong in Brazil.

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And it had incentive is from the extreme right in power.

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Uh, but I think one thing that we have to be aware is that in certain instance

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and spaces, allyship can be transformed into paternalism or maternalism.

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That is into a patronising attitude that does more harm than good, in

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other words, speaking or acting towards someone in a condescending manner

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that expresses, I think contempt.

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So, we have to be a little bit careful.

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Right.

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And, and I think then that in the current state of the world, solidarity

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is more important than ever because we're experiencing a sad moment in

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our world history, a moment in which microaggressions are common place, right?

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So, we need now to advance our allyship through all available means.

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Especially I think that by collective action, hand in hand with those

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experienced more closely the effects of new fascism, fighting with them, for

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them to put an end to their situation.

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Dr. Kim Ozano: Thank you, Cecilia.

Ishrat Jahan:

I would like to really focus on how we create motivation or, or identify

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potential allies to build on as well.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think you've talked about if that authentic motivation isn't there,

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you get this derogatory kind of tokenistic approach to allyship.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, I guess my question to you is, we started this discussion around

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health and health systems, if we think about gender justice, and allyship

Ishrat Jahan:

within health systems, how can we envision allyship within that sphere?

Abhijit Das:

I think you have hit the nail on the head, allyship has to extend to

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understanding men and masculinity because, uh, gender justice includes all genders.

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Now, the next point is how do men get affected themselves?

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What also is happening at the same time today is the health

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system itself is crumbling.

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The health system is becoming increasingly privatised.

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The health system is taking away all worker benefits to the poor workers.

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Men have fewer health needs, I completely buy that, but if you want men at home

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to become allies, and that's what's been my work, for women to seek abortion for

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women, not to face violence, for women to be able to get good maternal health

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services, we have to be empathetic towards men's own concerns as well.

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Toxic masculinity is, in a way, the response of a world becoming completely

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ignorant of men's changing needs.

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The way masculinity is framed, is that men can only be

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successful in being aggressive.

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Those who are not aggressive are frightened of not

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showing their opposition.

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So, toxic masculinity becomes visible, and the silent masculinity

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of men who are not toxic, who are probably not aggressive, is invisible.

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So, part of the job of allyship is to find and surface the men who are

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silent, the men who are concerned, but are afraid as well, because

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frightened men, non-aggressive men, do not have a space in the world.

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We cannot consider men as the enemy.

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They're part of the problem.

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They're part of the huge part of the problem.

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So, they have to be addressed, but they're not the enemy.

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Cecilia Maria Bacellar Sardenberg: You know, there are good men struggling for

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us in Congress, although Congress mostly masculine, there's mostly men there.

Abhijit Das:

In Brazil, very few women get into politics, they don't get the support

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from their parties and all that, but because of gender-based political

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violence, you know, has driven women away from being in politics.

Abhijit Das:

I think we have to make men understand that machismo, that all this violence,

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it is not good for them either.

Abhijit Das:

Showing allyship with those men who are at the bottom so, they know that the

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fight for gender justice is a struggle that they have to be in as well.

Ishrat Jahan:

I think when we're talking now about power, we are, we

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are saying that gender justice is also now a struggle across all these

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countries, India, Bangladesh, Brazil.

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Across all these country context, we are talking about rising up to

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fascism and recognising that gender is being weaponised by fascist

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systems and how we can counter it.

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I have a final question for you, which is what would your advice be about

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building solidarity in these times and connecting across movements, so we are not

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stuck in the silos that you had referred to previously in this conversation?

Abhijit Das:

Since we are talking of health systems, I think low hanging

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fruit that is possible is to do training of health providers because

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power is also implicit in the provider client or provider user relationship.

Abhijit Das:

What my experience is in India, and especially for the rural and the poor

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communities, is that social relationships, implicit social assumptions of power

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and privilege are as much within health providers as within society.

Abhijit Das:

So it is extremely important to tailor what we could call soft training skills.

Abhijit Das:

This is something we could push for, for making health systems,

Abhijit Das:

per se, more sensitive to the, uh, sort of discrimination that

Abhijit Das:

happens and the health system itself becomes an ally for gender justice.

Abhijit Das:

Dr. Kim Ozano: So, really raising understanding of the gender

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injustices that are taking place within the health system itself, and

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challenging social assumptions of power within the training early on

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to start building that solidarity.

Abhijit Das:

Cecilia Maria Bacellar Sardenberg: I agree because that's

Abhijit Das:

happened, in Brazil as well.

Abhijit Das:

I think it's very important that uh, people in the health system

Abhijit Das:

be trained to think in terms of allyship right from the beginning.

Abhijit Das:

In Brazil medical schools they have the public schools, which are free.

Abhijit Das:

Right?

Abhijit Das:

But medical school, a, a private one, it is very expensive.

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Only the rich can afford it.

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So, you are having doctors that come out who have no understanding of what

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really goes on in the world and how people suffer, how different class

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situations bring suffering to people.

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All medical schools, all nurses, schools have to have a discussion of

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gender justice, social justice, and be introduced to the notion of, of allyship.

Abhijit Das:

I think that's the only way that you're gonna build a

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better health systems, right?

Abhijit Das:

Dr. Kim Ozano: So, what I'm hearing from both of you is we need to start

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systematising allyship and understanding of gender justice and how privilege

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enacts within not only the health system, but within society, the health

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system mirrors society, so we have to start building that understanding

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from the bottom up again, because we have this changing global landscape

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that we all live in at the moment.

Abhijit Das:

Ishrat, at the beginning of this discussion, you said understanding

Abhijit Das:

allyship is difficult.

Abhijit Das:

Do you have any take homes for us after this conversation?

Ishrat Jahan:

I think this conversation has been very good for

Ishrat Jahan:

me because I've learned a lot from both of your collective experiences.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, thank you, uh, for giving those perspectives.

Ishrat Jahan:

One thing I am taking away from this conversation is the first thing that

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we discussed, it's that it starts from a place of personal commitment.

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So, from the answers that I'm hearing from both of you on what your advice is,

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it's going to have to start with people changing how they feel about others, how

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they feel about building communities.

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It has to start with people having empathy and having a sense of vulnerability.

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To reach out to each other, and have the ability to care for each other because

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the systems around us are falling apart.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, I think that's a fundamental takeaway that I think we should keep in mind.

Ishrat Jahan:

Dr. Kim Ozano: I think that's a great summary of what we've heard today.

Ishrat Jahan:

And you know, the key point there is, is to care and have

Ishrat Jahan:

empathy for each other as well.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, I think moving forward I will think about taking an active role in

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learning about experiences, amplifying them and supporting the movements

Ishrat Jahan:

and rights of others moving forward.

Ishrat Jahan:

So, for now, thank you to my guests for your amazing contribution, and thank you

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to Ishrat as well for being a co-host with me today Today's conversation

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has really explored the complexity of allyship in the fight for gender justice.

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We've talked about what it means to share power, to challenge harmful norms, and

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to build solidarity across different forms of privilege and marginalisation.

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We have heard how allyship can be both deeply personal and

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structurally transformative.

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In our next episode, we turn to the structural barriers faced by women

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with disabilities, and we talk about how disability rights activism is

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intersecting with gender justice.

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So, before you leave, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you'll

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know when the next episode is available.

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And if you found this conversation valuable, do take

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a moment to rate or review us.

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It really helps others find these important stories.

Ishrat Jahan:

Until next time, stay connected.

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Kim Ozano

Research and Development Director at SCL and co-founder and host of the ‘Connecting Citizens to Science’ (CCS) podcast. Kim is a health policy and systems researcher with over 15 years’ experience of designing, delivering and evaluating health and development projects in the Global South and UK. She is an implementation health research specialist, as can be seen from her publications and work at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where she remains an Honorary lecturer.
Kim creates space in Connecting Citizens to Science for researchers and communities to share their experience of co-production to shape policy and lasting positive change.