индийская Сэнгер

Called the "Margaret Sanger of India," Rama Rau (1893-1987) was founder and president of the Family Planning Association of India, and also served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Association from 1963-1971. Born to a large family of six brothers and five sisters, her own mother was a pioneer, and in the late 19th Century wrote articles in a women's magazine arguing the case for equal rights, drawing from her own experiences as a woman.

A young Rama Rau bucked the trend set by her older sisters and much of Indian society by not marrying young, and instead enrolling at the Presidency College of the Madras University. There, she set a new trend as one of the first Indian women to attend college (and to later teach at an institution of higher learning in the country), and as one of only 11 women in a student body of 700 men, daily endured protests by her male colleagues.

Her career as an educator led her to a life of social activism, working to abolish child marriage and to promote suffrage and equal citizenship for women, but her primary concern was for family planning and birth control.

In the early 1950s, Margaret Sanger suggested that the Family Planning Association of India, of which she was president, invite the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood to meet in Bombay, and Rama Rau gathered together her small but experienced group of volunteer social workers to make it happen. A large American contingent was present at the conference, including Sanger and population expert/Planned Parenthood leader William Vogt, as well as delegations from 12 other countries. At the time, this history-making conference helped put Planned Parenthood on the map as India's newest welfare service.

Dhanvanthi Rama Rau's memoirs, An Inheritance, were first published in 1977, and her daughter and granddaughter followed in her footsteps as smart and independent women. Her daughter, Santha Rama Rau, was a well-known writer and her granddaughter, Aisha Wayle, became the first woman to own a London investment company.

Today, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) continues the important work of Rama Rau and others like her. Formed in 1952 at Rama Rau's Bombay conference, today IPPF is a global service provider and leading advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all, with regional offices in Nairobi, Tunis, Brussels, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and New York, and a global headquarters in London. Nearly sixty years after its inception, IPPF is one of the world's largest organizations, with more service delivery points than McDonald's, working in over 170 countries as a global network of member associations. Approximately 36 million visits a year are made to IPPF's over 58,000 worldwide facilities.

At Planned Parenthood, innovative thinkers and inspiring leaders pass through our doors every single day, as Dhavanthi Rama Rau and others have before them. It's exhilarating to imagine what great movements they will have sparked in the decades to come!