Paper Short Abstract:

Extending the focus on female sterilisation beyond fertility control, my research shows how women’s postoperative imaginaries in northwest India are animated much more deeply by processes of social reproduction than by the end or loss of fertility.

Paper Abstract:

Female sterilisation has predominantly been critiqued as a technology of fertility control, but recent feminist scholarship has drawn attention to the “multiple harms” of sterilization across women’s “lifeworlds” (Chaparro-Buitrago 2022). Building on this, my research examines the multiple ‘motivations’ of sterilization-uptake in northwest India to demonstrate that more than the end or loss of fertility, women’s postoperative imaginaries are deeply animated by processes of social reproduction.

During my ethnographic fieldwork at a family planning clinic, women electing sterilisation usually reported to have ‘fulfilled’ their reproductive desires — 2-3 children, with at least one male child — and were instead concerned about recurring forms of reproductive suffering (Lukasite 2022): unwanted pregnancies, contraceptive side-effects, limited abortion care, poor menstrual health. Decision-making around sterilisation often centred around the desire to be “mukt” (freedom) from these “tensions”. Despite known postoperative risks and vulnerabilities, women talked of this freedom as necessary for effectively navigating the mounting domestic chores, caring responsibilities and kinship obligations.

Examining the long-standing sterilisation “bias” in India (Unnithan 2022), this paper argues that the operative logics of this contraceptive technology extends from governing biological fertility to ensuring women’s continued labour and participation in social reproduction processes as mothers, wives, care-givers and homemakers.