Medicalization, reproductive agency, and the desire for surgical sterilization among low-income women in urban Brazil.
This article draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork in an urban housing project to examine the social context and meanings of surgical sterilization for low-income women in Brazil. Low-income women resort to sterilization because they distrust or are unsatisfied with alternative methods and because it helps them to fulfill the requirements of modern, responsible motherhood. Although sterilization is an option among few alternatives, and one that has subjected women to greater medical management and intervention, I argue that sterilization also represents poor women's active struggle to improve their lives and to resist the burdens placed on them by unequal gender relations. This article contributes to a growing anthropological literature that demonstrates how reproduction has become a central site where social values are constituted and contested, and it details women's diverse responses to the process of medicalization.
de Bessa
Gina Hunter
GH
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Campus Box 4660, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4660, USA. glbessa@ilstu.edu
D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001938:Brazil; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003268:Contraception Behavior; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008393:Marriage; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D011203:Poverty; D011247:Pregnancy; D046269:Reproductive Rights; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012937:Social Mobility; D013245:Sterilization, Reproductive / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology* / Q000639:trends; D014505:Urban Population