Adrienne Germain papers

Throughout her career, Adrienne Germain has been a major force advancing international women's health and human rights in low income countries, and has made this work central to the missions of many international organizations. Born in San Francisco in 1947 to William and Carel Germain, Germain graduated from Wellesley College in 1969 with a B.A. and from University of California at Berkeley in 1971 with an M.A., both in sociology. Germain began her career at the Population Council in 1970, where for two years she undertook family planning program research. She started work with the Ford Foundation in 1972, where she became the youngest and first woman to be appointed as a Resident Representative to Bangladesh. In this role she worked to shift discussion of population issues to a reproductive health lens. She rose to the role of Vice President of and Program Director for the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) in 1985, where she drove policy analysis and conceptual development, supervised numerous programs and local groups in Asia, Africa, and Latin America addressing women's reproductive health rights, produced scholarship, and advised the U.S. State Department, NGOs, European governments, and the U.N. system. By 1994, Germaine's influence had led to the consensus that women's sexual and reproductive health rights were central to women's human rights, sustainable development, and population stabilization. In 1998, with the retirement of Joan Banks Dunlop, Germain became president of the IWHC. She went on to work for United Nations Population Fund as a consultant for their Reproductive Health Branch from 2011-2014. Germain has received many prestigious awards, among them the United Nations Population Award in 2012 and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at Bard College in 2001.

More information on the International Women’s Health Coalition's history specifically is available in this downloadable document: "Having Our Say: Intellectual Contributions on Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Health by the International Women’s Health Coalition, 1987-2011" by Adrienne Germain.

The following text was prepared by Adrienne Germain before her chosen death on May 19, 2022.

"My life was deeply rewarding and largely self-determined, reflecting my conviction that, as Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, 'There is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely and then act boldly.' As aging reduced my autonomy and freedom to live fully as I wished, I decided to end my life voluntarily while happy, healthy and at peace, true to myself and my values. I hope that the laws and norms that forced me to act in secret will soon change to respect and support the right to a thoughtfully chosen death."