Inspiring people @WUR: Inga Winkler

Wageningen University & Research is committed to creating an environment of inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities because we are convinced that this contributes to better research and better teaching. We are interviewing inspirational people about diversity and inclusion.

Inga Winkler’s research agenda sits at the intersection of human rights, public health, and gender justice. Issues that are considered taboo, in particular sanitation and menstruation, have piqued her interest, but her research also spans the domains of water, food and nutrition. 

When Inga Winkler started researching menstruation, she initially thought it would be a niche subject, a topic on which she would write one article and then focus on ‘bigger’ issues. “But I was proven wrong. It's about so much more than menstruation itself. It's about everything that we as a society ascribe to menstruation, the whole sociocultural construction around it. I’ve been doing research on menstruation for almost 15 years, and I don't think I'm done with it. Looking at the state of the world, research on gender justice is not going to become obsolete.”

How would you describe your career until now? 

“I've always been interested in human rights - economic, social and cultural rights in particular, and the intersections with gender justice. The topics of my research are quite focused, but in terms of the institutions where I've worked, my career path has not been as linear. That's a good thing. I wouldn't want to miss the early work that I did with the United Nations, working much more directly in a policy context. I got into academia in 2016. I used to work in the United States at Columbia University and then at the Central European University in Vienna. I think those different institutions bring good perspectives. I wouldn't want to miss any of it.”

Your interest in human rights already started at the beginning of your career?

“I studied law a long time ago. And I always knew that I wanted to do international law and human rights. I did my PhD on the human right to water. Since then, it has always been human rights.”

Water is a very fundamental issue. Is that what makes it interesting for you?

“What we label as ‘water crisis’ is really a crisis of water injustice. Water is about inequalities, disparities in society. How do we value it, how is it distributed, how is it priced, who has access to it, who doesn't have access? Those issues are very much at the forefront from the human rights perspective. That is what makes it interesting to me.”

“When I was in the US, I did quite a bit of work with social movements that focus on water and sanitation justice. Understanding how they experience water insecurities, how they frame their struggles, and how this informs advocacy, that’s at the core of this research. I like to bridge research with advocacy and this is where I feel I have something to contribute.”

Your profile page says that issues that are considered taboo have piqued your interest. Why is that?

“I think these questions are fascinating to unpack. And what we consider taboo has a lot to do with power relations in society. Why do we consider menstruation taboo and why do we stigmatise menstruation? Addressing menstruation starts by raising more awareness, by making sure that we talk about menstruation openly, that we don't hide it. The implications are huge in terms of health, work, and education. In the Netherlands when people can't go to work because they experience menstrual pain and they need to call in sick, many pretend to have a headache or anything but menstrual pain. Studies show that only 20 percent of women are comfortable telling their employer that they experience menstrual pain. To address this, we need to change the institutions we work in, the places we live in - we need structural change to ensure that no one is disadvantaged because they menstruate.”

“Many of us have experienced sexist and derogatory comments, belittling, assumptions that we can't properly do our work, that we are ‘unstable’ or ‘not fit’ for doing the job. We see the impacts in terms of the persistent gender pay gap, women getting fewer promotions and being less represented in higher positions. That's not just because of menstrual stigma, but I think the fact that menstruation is stigmatized reinforces a lot of these issues. Seeking to unravel how these taboos and stigmas shape society, that's a significant part of the research we are doing.”

Do you think you're successful in decreasing the stigma or making menstruation more a subject you can freely talk about?

“I think there's been an enormous shift over the past decade or so.  When I started doing research on menstruation 15 years ago, it was very, very lonely. There were some pioneering researchers since the 1970s, but it was a very small field. That has really changed. There's a lot of interest among PhD students, graduate students and young researchers. As for the media, there’s all kinds of venues covering menstruation, whether we look at women's magazines or the daily newspapers. Of course, quite a bit of coverage is fairly superficial and reinforces stereotypes, but menstrual activists keep pushing this agenda.”

“Just the other day, a student I had been in touch with, wrote to me that she introduced having menstrual products in all the bathrooms in her institution. She thanked me for sparking that conversation. It's these little signs of positive change that keep me going.”

The focus on specific health issues of women is only recent.

“When we look at women's health more broadly, it's been marginalised for so long. So much of the earlier medical research has been done with the assumption that women are basically ‘small men’. Women have been excluded from so many medical studies in the past. That's only slowly changing. There are many health conditions that impact different genders differently. Now there is some increasing attention and our research on endometriosis contributes to that, but we still face the repercussions of these centuries of neglect. There's still a long way to go.”

Does it make you more pessimistic or does it make you more activist?

“I'm an optimist. I tend to see the positive change. I look at all the grassroots movements, the activists that engage with gender justice, with human rights and with menstrual activism, in particular. They continue to think they can bring about positive change and they remain optimistic, despite all the regression we face. If I can contribute something to amplify and support them in their work, then I'm happy to do that. I’m not naïve, though. I’m obviously aware that many societies become increasingly polarised and that any work on gender faces significant backlash. But that makes feminist research and mobilisation all the more important.”

Do you consider yourself more as a scientist or more an activist?

“If you want to put a label on it, then a scholar-activist. I'm now much more embedded in academia than I used to be in the past, and I very much appreciate that. It was a very deliberate move to come to Wageningen. I've never had this much freedom in my career to really focus on the issues that I want to focus on. I do like the time to reflect and to have time to read and write. Part of research is much more about more foundational questions, understanding something that hasn't gotten much attention.
But most of what I do is connected to the work that social movements do. So, there's always this interface. My ideal way of doing research is developing it jointly with people who are meant to benefit from that research. It makes research so much more meaningful to know that someone benefits from those findings.”

Considering Wageningen University in relation to gender justice, do you think Wageningen is doing a good job?

“I think there's a lot that's going really well, when we look at the balance between work life and personal life, overall workload expectations, opportunity to take parental leave. That's a big plus for gender justice. There's also a lot where we could make improvements. On the research side, compared to where I've previously been, there's surprisingly little research on gender. I’d argue you should take a gender perspective to pretty much any research you do, because there's always a gendered aspect.  But feminist research requires more than attention to gender as a topic of research, it informs our actual research practice, how we do research, who is involved in it. I’d like to see a greater commitment to that.”

It's the official vision of Wageningen University that it doesn't matter at all who you love, what language you speak, where you were born or what you believe.

“I come from a human rights perspective, so obviously I agree with that. But at the same time, I don't think it's true. Gender and race and religion and language and ethnicity, sexuality, they all matter very much. We can only address how they matter if we acknowledge that people have different needs and that many people face structural disadvantages. That is what I would like to see in a statement. We do need to look at all the factors that shape people’s identities and then we need to take positive steps to overcome the discrimination they face.”

“This requires structural change, which necessitates high level commitment, policies and resources. But maybe even more importantly, it requires a cultural shift through a lot of little things. For instance, we have all our public holidays coming up. Most of them are Christian holidays. We never consider other religious holidays. Wageningen is quite an international institution in many respects, but in other ways it isn’t. We need to do better in understanding and addressing the challenges, microaggressions and everyday racism many international students - and also staff - face. We should provide more support, such as peer support, mentoring, and spaces to discuss these experiences.”

“Looking at my own research, what kind of accommodations would we need for people who menstruate or for people who are in perimenopause or menopause? There are lots of little steps we can and should take to make Wageningen more inclusive. That starts with that awareness of knowing where people are coming from, what kind of accommodations they need, what kind of structural disadvantage they face, what kind of redress is needed. And all of us can contribute to further developing the institution we would like Wageningen to be.”