Rajamani Rowley obituary

My wife, Rajamani Rowley, who has died aged 80 from cancer, travelled far in a life that took her from a convent school, staffed by Irish nuns, in Malacca, Malaysia, to becoming one of the most influential non-government providers of reproductive health in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, in the final decades of the 20th century.

Mani was born in Malacca, into a close-knit Sri Lankan Tamil family, the eldest of four sisters and a brother. Her father, Nagarajah Mylevaganam, a firm but kindly hospital administrator, impressed on her that while he could provide an education, it was up to her to make a career. Her mother, Rajapakiam (nee Chelliah), was a housewife.

After leaving the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, Mani worked for three years as a teacher in rural villages, learning the reality of poverty and the price that many mothers were paying for the triple burden of meeting home needs, labouring long hours on subsistence farms and undergoing repeated pregnancies, leading to high levels of infant and child mortality. This experience informed Mani’s “people-centred” approach to problems, whether in her role as charity director or field operator.

In 1961 Mani took her first journey, by cargo boat, to London, to take a course in social policy and administration at the London School of Economics, where she was influence by the LSE governor and personal tutor Kit Russell. This was followed by a year at the University of Chicago on a Ford Foundation scholarship.

Back in Malacca, Mani was invited to pioneer the world’s first Family Centre in Kuala Lumpur, an attempt to provide support for poor people at every key stage of life. It attracted international attention and had many spin-offs. It was also where, as a journalist reporting on the initiative for People, the magazine of the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, I first met Mani.

We married in Malaysia in 1981 and returned to London. Mani became overseas director of Population Concern, a unit set up by the Family Planning Association. She won valuable funding support from the European commission and went on to transform the unit into an independent charity with broad aims.

These included supporting local development partners for long-term projects aimed at improving the status, skills and education of women and girls as well as the means to make choices about childbearing.

In practice this involved long hours and much difficult and sometimes dangerous travel, a fact recognised by the award of an honorary OBE in 1996 for “devoting herself unsparingly and far beyond the call of duty to the cause of population and development”.

Mani is survived by me, two daughters, Renu and Rekha, from her first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1973, three grandchildren, Kearunn, Hari and Ganesh, a brother, Krishna Raj, and two sisters, Rajes and Usha.