Exploring Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Gender-Based Violence Needs in Libya: A Multi-Methods Study

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore women’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and gender-based violence (GBV) needs in Libya and examine how structural, political, and normative systems shape access to care. Across five thematically distinct but methodologically connected manuscripts, I trace how systemic breakdown, moral gatekeeping, and legal ambiguity regulate women’s bodies, decisions, and movements, and how women navigate, endure, and resist these layered forms of control. The research draws on a multi-method qualitative study conducted in Tripoli, Benghazi, and Sabha (2023–2025), including a desk review, a service mapping exercise, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with women, and key informant interviews. Guided by feminist and justice-oriented frameworks, the dissertation foregrounds women’s lived experiences and the everyday governance of care. Findings show that access to SRH and GBV services in Libya is structured by interlocking systems of governance. Legal codes, service infrastructures, religious ideologies, cultural norms, and social surveillance do not act independently but reinforce one another, producing conditional and selective access to care. This governance framework generates structural vulnerability, where women’s exposure to harm is normalized, their claims to care are mediated through moral judgment and legal ambiguity, and their autonomy is subordinated to family and national honor. Hegemonic masculinities are institutionalized in health, legal, and security systems that sustain male guardianship and control, while women’s bodies are positioned as repositories of collective morality. Yet women actively resist through secrecy, creative adaptation, linguistic reframing, and online solidarity, tactics that undermine structural constraints while exposing women to risk. This dissertation provides the first in-depth analysis of SRH and GBV services in Libya and argues that meaningful progress requires systemic change, including legal reform, redistribution of decision- making power, and recognition of women’s adaptive strategies as a foundation for more just and dignified care.