Presentation1
- 1. How is the continuation of life constructed through the experiences and meanings of women‟s infertility?
- 2. Outline: 1. The potential for biological reproduction as an embodied expectation of life 2. Cultural life course 3. Constructions of continuity 4. Egypt: “Mother of the missing one” 5. The Gambia: “To bear, to be patient, to endure”
- 3. The potential for biological reproduction as an embodie expectation of life • The importance of the socio-cultural context in shaping the experience of infertility: an example of an influencing context is pronatalism •Pronatalism: a set of representations, practices, beliefs and constructions around the centrality of motherhood •Pronatalist discourses priviledge the „birth mother‟ as the only „real‟ mothe • Embodied social biographies for women that mandate childbearing after m The gendered nature of embodied expectations.
- 4. Cultural Life Course •The cultural life course provides the basis for the development of models about how life is to be conceptualised. As a collectively shared image, the cultural life course may provide orienting images and motivations through which social and individual life is guided. •Two perspectives currently prevail: • The view in Western traditions of a “normative” perspective where the self is viewed as a cohesive, bounded, continuous and stable. • An alternative view is that of a “contingent” self that is culturally determined and emphasizes the negotiated meanings, diversity, and inner experience. In this view individuals continuously reconstitute their identities in response to internal and external stimuli and the self is ever changing.
- 5. Constructions of Continuity - A sense of order begins with body. Bodily knowledge is central to how individuals construct meaning of their lives. - A discontinuity in life, such as the discovery of infertility, forces indivi to reconstruct their biographies. - Continuity is a human need and a universal expectation but the specif shape of continuity is given within particular cultures. - Across all cultures individuals express concern over issues of cohere and consistency in the life narrative story. -For women the discovery of infertility can collapse their assumptions o own bodies and makes their physical bodies unpredictable. -Cultural values entail a need to establish and maintain links to an imagined future, yet disruption to life symbolizes loss of future. -Infertility associated with metaphors of hopelessness and finality. -The continuity of infertility can leave one feeling totally excluded from „great human cycle‟.
- 6. “Mother of the Missing One” - Egypt - -In the Egyptian theory of procreation women are marginalised as the reproducers and men, under the power of patriarchy, are perceived as having the procreative potency whose familial supremacy comes by virtue of their fatherhood. Effectively, infertile women are blamed for endangering the masculine procreativity by the virtue of bodies that fail to facilitate conception. -When failing to reproduce offspring women are cast as being less than other women, as depriving their husbands and the families of their husbands of offspring and endangering other people‟s children through their uncontrollable envy. - The stigma is even more accentuated by the fact that the urban poor Egyptian women‟s alternatives to motherhood and domesticity are largely absent. -The stigma of infertility in Egypt carries with it a particular identity of the “Mother of
- 7. -Infertility is widely acknowledged as a type of misfortune for which religiously based interpretations are to be sought. It is a condition “from God” -In Egypt approximately 90% of the population are Muslims. God is perceived a creator of the universe and all life in it and therefore God is referred to as the „orchestrator of human procreation‟. -The life course of each individual is decided by God before they are born and therefore one‟s destiny is predetermined. -Many Egyptian women explain life as a tree where “each person has a leaf upon which his or her life is written: included on the leaf is the time of birth, if and when children will be born, and how and when a person will die, at which time the leaf falls from the tree”. (Inhorn 1994:213) -The belief that all God‟s decisions are meaningful: according to most Egyptian women infertility is best viewed as a test of patience and faith.
- 8. -Life occurrences are perceived as being under God‟s control. Events do not happen randomly but occur in predestined times. -As infertility and its treatment are related to procreation and the preservation humankind, the attitudes and cultural perspectives regarding it and its allevia are extremely sensitive issues for the Middle Eastern people. -Although life is predetermined humans are not supposed to act as passive creatures but are encouraged to exercise their minds and make decisions. Infe women especially take this notion very seriously and seek solutions to their p -“God expects those who are sick to seek treatment” but if and when “medicin works is God‟s decision (Inhorn 1993: 214)
- 9. The unmet expectations of motherhood in The Gambia -A woman‟s greatest resource at the outset of her adult life is her capacity to reproduce. -The conversion of women‟s bodily value from youth to elderhood through the social implications of reproduction. -Childbearing the most desirable way to demonstrate wifely virtue: “Producing and raising children will reflect the degree to which she „throws her soul‟ or risks her life in order to carry out this life duty, bearing for her husband all the child potentials that God has given her and raising them carefully for her husband. The greater the struggle, the more blessings she will earn” (Bledsoe 2002:255). “Infertility is possibly the worst fate an individual can suffer. After you are gone your children will remind people of you. If you have no children, everything about you disappears: you leave as a whole” (Bledsoe 2002: 77).
- 10. -As opposed to the Western assumptions of chronological time and women‟s declining ability to reproduce according to the ticking clock, Gambian women d assume a life course of smooth and linear decline. Rather, events in life includi hardships engrave themselves on the body at a pace that is dependent on exte events. -During a woman‟s life course in Gambia she goes through the following stages “virgin” (s.,tembo), “middle” woman (foromusoo), “spent” woman (sarifo) and “old woman” (musukoto). The principle aspect guiding physical transformation to the next stage is a wear-based deterioration of bodily resources. A woman‟s life course is therefore perceived as forming of and going through stages of fer and their bodily possibilities for childbearing. -What happens then when the “middle” woman fails to become a “spent” woman? Since the expectation of motherhood guides the whole imagined life course of a Gambian woman the absent-presence of infertility can marginaliseand pathologise the lived experience of women who‟s lives do not conform to the ideal.
Editor's Notes
- #6: How do women reconnect themselves to the socialand cultural order after a disruption to the life course occurssuch as the discovery of infertility? How do women reconnect themselves to the socialand cultural order after a disruption to the life course occurssuch as the discovery of infertility? How do women reconnect themselves to the socialand cultural order after a disruption to the life course occurssuch as the discovery of infertility?
- #7: Mother of the missing one”Under the Islamic law, men whose wives fail to reproduce offspring after seven years can be replace them through divorce or polygynous remarriage since reproductive failure is blamed on women (Inhorn 1994). Because of the extent of stigmatization on infertility in urban areas of Egypt among the possible social roles there are very few are less desirable than that of the infertile woman as Inhorn (1994) asserts.