This special issue focuses on reproductive justice (RJ) as a framework for feminist research and activism. The introduction provides an overview of when and why the RJ framework was developed, outlines the ways it challenged and extended the way reproductive rights were understood and approached by feminist scholars and activists, and articulaties its productive potential. RJ’s relevance for identifying and responding to the breadth of rights violations taking place across the globe today can only be grasped with a firm understanding of its scope and foundational concepts, such as intersectionality. Its expanded scope, conceptual complexity, and epistemological orientation make RJ incompatible with the neoclassical rational-choice paradigm, but points of resonance with other frameworks provide possibilities for its integration and contribution both to knowledge and to the development of a feminist methodology in economics. The contributions to this special issue represent some of the first efforts to take forward this important project. HIGHLIGHTS Reproductive justice (RJ) framework challenges framings of reproductive rights centered on non-interference and the right to choose. Attention must be paid to what the choice frame leaves out and what RJ highlights. The RJ framework can aid in development of a feminist methodology in economics.

ABSTRACT Choice has been foundational to movements supporting abortion rights. However, the focus on choice has been criticized by reproductive justice (RJ) movements, who advocate for a broader perspective encompassing the diversity and complexity of reproductive trajectories. The RJ framework contends that reproductive freedom requires addressing intersecting social and economic factors that impact individuals’ ability and resources to make choices. This article relocates the RJ framework in the field of economics and argues for leveraging insights from feminist economics, empirical research, and the capabilities approach (CA) to expand our understanding of abortion beyond an individual act and the moment of choice. Building on these insights, the article proposes that feminist economics can draw on the CA to deepen our understanding of the abortion choice in conjunction with different choice sets available (or not available) to individuals in their contexts, thereby providing a ground to integrate the RJ framework into economics. HIGHLIGHTS A reproductive justice lens views abortion beyond an act of choice, encompassing its socioeconomic determinants and outcomes. The capabilities approach provides a framework for incorporating RJ into economics. Feminist economics can mobilize empirical insights to contextualize reproductive choices and abortion advocacy for the RJ framework.

Repeated Supreme Court cases suggest uninformed sterilization care is a persistent and contemporary issue in India. This article examines patient satisfaction ratings as a potential accountability mechanism to assess normalized forms of coercion. With a sample of over 180,000 sterilized women in India, it identifies a statistically significant relationship between exposure to coercive care and odds of reporting low quality. However, over 95 percent of women who underwent a tubal ligation procedure rated their care highly even when provided with inadequate information (a recognized form of coercion), with more pronounced discordance when a patient belonged to a historically marginalized caste. System-modifiable factors, such as conditional cash transfers (CCT) to the patient and postpartum procedure timing increased reporting discordance. Using a reproductive justice lens and building on Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, this work examines how to identify human rights violations in the routine delivery of care. HIGHLIGHTS Often considered historically bounded and isolated, coercive sterilization persists in India to this day. Health system performance metrics, particularly subjective ones, mask routine and normalized forms of coercion. A reproductive justice lens highlights the importance of understanding and interpreting expressed preferences for equitable policy.

Issues regarding whether and when to have children have been at the forefront of feminist struggles for reproductive justice. Drawing on qualitative data produced through forty in-depth interviews, this article addresses constraints to reproductive justice by empirically analyzing how women negotiate childbearing amid structural infertilities in neoliberal Chile. The study shows that the erosion of social protection, privatization of basic services, increasing costs of childrearing, gender inequalities in labor, and feminization of care push women into forgoing, limiting, and delaying childbearing as reproductive tactics to enact responsible selves and become good mothers. Structural infertilities intersect with economic injustices and disproportionally affect lower-class women who struggle with the lack of basic conditions for childrearing, precarious livelihoods, and the stigma of bad mothers. These findings reveal that structural infertilities constitute a major obstacle for reproductive justice and illustrate the inextricable intersections between reproductive and economic justice. HIGHLIGHTS Structural infertilities constrain women’s autonomy whether and when to have children. Women forgo, limit, and delay childbearing as tactics to become good mothers. Women contest the feminization of reproduction as gender inequalities remain pervasive. Lower-class women struggle with the stigma of bad mothers as motherhood becomes a class privilege. Neoliberalism and patriarchy constitute sites of reproductive injustice.

With the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, many US employers announced they would reimburse employees for abortion-related travel expenses. This action complements increasingly common employer policies subsidizing employee access to assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and egg freezing. This article reflects on why employers offer these benefits and whether they enhance or undermine reproductive justice. From the employer’s perspective, abortion and assisted reproductive technologies help women to plan childbearing around the demands of their jobs. Both are associated with delayed childbirth and reduced fertility, which lower the costs of motherhood to employers. However, firm subsidization of these services does not further reproductive justice because it reifies structures that incentivize women to delay childbirth and reduce fertility, and it reinforces economic and reproductive inequalities. The article concludes by questioning whether reproductive justice is possible without transforming the economy so that it prioritizes care over profits. HIGHLIGHTS Contradictions between production and reproduction manifest as a motherhood penalty. Support for fertility-regulating technologies lowers the motherhood penalty for firms. Employer support for these technologies exacerbates economic and social inequities. These policies reinforce the systemic pressure to mold reproduction to fit labor markets. Reproductive justice requires broad systemic changes that prioritize care over profits.

Despite evidence of a growing interest in reproductive justice (RJ) among feminist economists, this interest is nascent. To avoid RJ becoming a buzzword and losing its political and critical edge, it is important to fully grasp what the RJ framework means and brings to research. This Dialogue aims to create a space where the possibility of an interdisciplinary, transnational exchange of knowledge and ideas could be explored and encouraged. It presents four views about what it means to adopt and commit to the RJ framework in feminist research. One of the contributors was trained as an economist and the remaining contributors trained in other disciplines. The contributions discuss directly or show by example how research guided by the RJ framework can contribute to the development of an ethical and effective transformative response to an increasingly oppressive policy trajectory in the current historical moment.

Feminist economic approaches have transformed mainstream economic analysis to better account for intrahousehold decision making. To quantify decision making, studies resort to self-reported survey-based measures, derived from questions directed to household members, or proxy-variable methods. This study uses a choice experiment, a stated preference method, implemented in rural Senegal and Uganda and specifically distinguishes between individual and household choices to analyze spouses’ preferences on fertility and child raising and calculate a decision-making coefficient. Findings show individual fertility preferences of men and women cannot substitute for household-level choices, and intrahousehold decision making concerning fertility and child raising is region specific. While in Uganda household fertility choices reflect a balance between the spouses’ fertility preferences, in Senegal these choices seem more dominated by the husband’s preference. This study demonstrates the importance of considering the adequate decision-making unit when designing family planning and child-centered programs and of using a region-specific approach. HIGHLIGHTS Analyzing spousal fertility and child-raising choices provides an alternative to traditional proxies for intrahousehold decision making. Choice experimental data and methods enables the calculation of a decision-making coefficient. Individual fertility preferences cannot substitute for household-level choices. Considering the adequate gender and decision-making unit is crucial in designing family planning programs.

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that women in Sub-Saharan African and other low- and middle-income countries are more time-poor than men. There is also contrary evidence that highlights differences in women's employment rates and access to basic infrastructure. This study examines gender differences in the length of the working day and time poverty in Ghana's Greater Accra Region. The analysis uses a unique primary dataset that includes time spent commuting to and from work and time in paid and unpaid work. Time spent commuting is salient in the Greater Accra Region; commute times can be long and public transport, mainly by trotro, is often uncomfortable. The analysis shows that, when time commuting and in household work are included, women's working days are longer and they are more time-poor than men. Women's greater reliance on trotros for commuting and higher rates of small scale self-employment also contribute to their longer working days. HIGHLIGHTS Time poverty limits time for leisure, sleep, and personal care, impacting life quality. In the Greater Accra Region, working days are long, averaging over twelve hours and commuting times add on average two hours to the working day. Women’s working days are 0.8 h longer, and they are more likely to be time poor. Women's time poverty reflects longer hours in unpaid household work. Self-employed women with no employees are among the most time poor.