Spirits of the womb: Migration,reproductive choice and healing in Rajasthan

Abstract

In this article I focus on the connections between poor women's migration to a basti in Jaipur city in north-west India and their reproductive anxieties, agency and outcomes. I suggest that, in terms of their reproductive choice and freedom, women's experience of migration is highly ambivalent. Three main consequences of women's migration account for this ambivalence: (a) a shift in gender roles, conjugal relationships and related expectations of childbearing; (b) an enhanced recourse to spiritual healers via friendship with women across castes; and (c) a greater resort to private, professional, gynaecological care, complementing the negative experiences of public health sector attitudes, provisions and programmes. While women have a greater role in reproductive decision-making as a result of a shift in gender roles and relationships, they experience greater constraints in bodily terms as reflected in the medicalisation of their bodies. Nevertheless, basti women are constantly negotiating better reproductive outcomes for themselves. Their resort to private health care enables them to avoid state services, allowing them direct access to health care, often without the knowledge of their husbands or relatives.

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