Short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss three different experiences of vaccine hesitancy in two different contexts. Mobilizing the experience of smallpox (1904 and 1966-72) and the Zika epidemic in Brazil, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil and France.

Long abstract:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines vaccine hesitancy as the delay or refusal, despite availability, in administering recommended vaccines (WHO, 2014). Hesitation comprises a broad spectrum of attitudes, from fear to total refusal, with different degrees.

In these gradations of refusal, we can point out the fear regarding new medicines for religious, ideological, and scientific reasons. In the literature, we consider two pertinent aspects that interpose gender relations in research on these diseases and women as subjects who stand out in this refusal movement and the movement of actions in favor of mass vaccinations.

Our objective is to think about vaccination practices and discourses about belief, disbelief, biomedical citizenship, and individual autonomy in shaping vaccine acceptance speeches. Our analysis will be guided to understand such processes as gendered, marked by gender imaginaries that, when shaping male and female performances and, among these, those of motherhood, also shape discourses and practices of vaccine acceptance or denial. In addition to denialism, we hypothesize that the contextual idea of hesitation serves as a better analytical tool for understanding the processes of refusal or acceptance of vaccination practices in contexts of health emergencies. By comparing three distinct historical moments and two different social contexts, our objective is to analyze how social context, biomedical technologies, relationships, and health emergencies co-produce each other, leading to the need to understand vaccine hesitancy as a situated phenomenon, which depends on the national context, diversity of experiences and which points to different ways of experiencing health emergencies.