Examining Middle-Class Women's Reproductive Agency in Collective and Patriarchal Settings of Urban Northern India (original) (raw)
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This qualitative study explores how urban middle-class north Indian women from the states of Haryana and Delhi practise their reproductive agency within collective and patriarchal settings. Snowballing was used to recruit participants; 45 married urban middle-class women who have children were interviewed. Analysis was conducted using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of capital. Many studies take the view that Indian women's reproductive choices are controlled by their husbands and in-laws, suggesting that women are oppressed and without agency. However, this study indicates that women do receive support within their affinal families that influences their choices but does not necessarily indicate they are oppressed. These women, while practicing their agency, aim to achieve their interests through strategies of resistance and/or negotiation within the patriarchal settings of their affinal families. Their ability to both negotiate and resist suggests that agency is at once transformative and reproductive.
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Both son-preference and small family size are important elements of contemporary urban middle-class Indian families. The prevalence of small families of one or two children with a strong desire to have a son has pushed women to resort to illegal means of ultrasound sexdetection, use services from spiritual healers, and follow ancient Indian knowledge. I have used the concept of technologies to explain the use of modern reproductive technologies and the application of ancient spiritual knowledge in women's lives. In addition, I have employed the concepts of multiple modernities that suggests the use of technology to meet contemporary reproductive needs is quite modern in itself. It is a qualitative study of urban middle-class married mothers in the states of Delhi and Haryana, India, view and practice son preference. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 45 urban married, educated, middle-class mothers recruited through the snowballing technique. This article suggests that technology and society are mutually constitutive interests technology can be seen as both shaped by social-cultural settings and shaping social structures.
Disciplining the sex ratio: exploring the governmentality of female foeticide in India
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Not a mother, yet a woman: Exploring experiences of women opting out of motherhood in India
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Motherhood is a role and institution that defines a woman's identity and provides her adult status in Indian society. A girl, from her childhood, is socialized to be a future mother and reproducer of the family. In this context, when a woman is not a mother, either by circumstance or choice, she is deemed as "incomplete" with a "deviant" identity. This paper analyzes the experiences of women who defy such structurally embedded notions of womanhood and redefine their identity beyond the institution of motherhood. Exploring the experiences of twelve childfree women in some cities of India, this paper examines their reasons for opting out of motherhood. The intricacies of each narrative reflect the complexity of arriving at any generalization on what makes women forgo motherhood. Nonetheless, the unwillingness to embrace the role of motherhood at the cost of losing their freedom and the urge to pursue personal desires emerge as predominant reasons along with other motivations.
Traditions and reproductive technology in an urbanizing north Indian village
Social Science & Medicine, 1997
A~tract--This article addresses the practices of prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortion through ethnographic research in Shahargaon, a Jat village undergoing rapid urbanization and cultural change in north India. The paper presents the sociodemographic outcomes of sex-selective abortion practiced within a system of patriarchy, manifested in terms of son preference and daughter disfavor. It argues that changes from an agriculture to an urban economy have led to a decrease in family size among Shahargaon Jats. In spite of improvements in educational and economic status, there is a reinforcement of son preference and daughter disfavor in the Jar community in Shahargaon. Jat couples are using prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortion to achieve smaller family size and to reduce the number of daughters in a family. Copyright ~_) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
Rhetorics of motherhood:Politics, Policy, and Family Ideologies in India
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Motherhood is the imperative metaphor for care and love in most cultures, even if not perceived to have a monopoly over them. It is generally understood as a natural, diffuse way of being for all women. The 'naturalness' of motherhood lays the ground for women's apparent affinity with caring. It sets out the bases for a 'natural', gendered, familial morality. However, even as the idea of motherhood seems to call forth a universal and timeless female practice, whatever the shifts in gender roles, the grounds on which elaborations and naturalisations of motherhood are built shift between cultures and classes and over time. In this paper I attempt to trace the shifting elaborations of motherhood, which informed and shaped public discussion and state policy on women's issues in India in the last century.
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The societal changes in India and the available variety of reproductive health services call for evidence to inform health systems how to satisfy young women's reproductive health needs. Inspired by Foucault's power idiom and Bandura's agency framework, we explore young women's opportunities to practice reproductive agency in the context of collective social expectations. We carried out in-depth interviews with 19 young women in rural Rajasthan. Our findings highlight how changes in notions of agency across generations enable young women's reproductive intentions and desires, and call for effective means of reproductive control. However, the taboo around sex without the intention to reproduce made contraceptive use unfeasible. Instead, abortions were the preferred method for reproductive control. In conclusion, safe abortion is key, along with the need to address the taboo around sex to enable use of "modern" contraception. This approach could prevent unintended pregnancies and expand young women's agency.