Abstract
Childbearing can only be fully understood within the specific social and economic context in which it occurs. In rural India, the pregnant woman and the newly-delivered mother are simultaneously workers and the bearers of the next generation of workers.2 The high levels of maternal and infant mortality current in North India result in part from the high price paid by Indian village women, as the day-to-day requirements for their labour power often run counter to longer-term considerations for their own, or their babies’, health. Moreover, piecemeal maternal and child health programmes will founder if they are based on an inadequate understanding of women’s position in society and local evaluations of it.
This paper is a revised and abridged version of our Contaminating States: Childbearin., Midwifery and the State in Rural North Indi., Indian Social Institute Monograph Series, no.22 (New Delhi, 1985). The research reported here was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, to whom we are grateful. Thanks to the generosity of the late Dr Alfred D’Souza we were Visiting Research Fellows at the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, while we were in India. Kunwar Satya Vira and Dr K. K. Khanna were immensely helpful during our stay in Bijnor, and we should also like to thank our research assistants, Swaleha Begum, Radha Rani Sharma, and Savita Pandey. Many people have helped with comments on earlier versions of this paper: our particular thanks go to Haleh Afshar, Jocelyn Kynch and Carol Wolkowitz.
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Notes
We do not restrict our understanding of ‘work’ to Census categories (which show very few of these women as workers) nor to views which belittle the considerable efforts expended by women. See further L. Beneria (ed.), Women and Development: The sexual division of labour in rural societie. (London, 1982).
See R. Jeffery, ‘Medical policy-making: out of dependency?’, in M. Gaborieau and A. Thorner (eds), Asie du Su. (Paris: Mouton, 1981);
R. Jeffery, ‘New patterns in health aid to India’, Economic and Political Weekl., 1982 (revised version in International Journal of Health Service., 15, 3, (1985)).
‘When did you last see your mother? Aspects of female autonomy in rural North India’ (forthcoming). Contrast this with H. Gideon, ‘A baby is born in Punjab’, American Anthropologis., 64 (1962) pp. 1220–34.
W. Crooke (ed.), Islam in Indi. (Oxford University Press, 1921) p. 25.
A. Young, ‘The relevance of traditional medical cultures to modern primary health care’, Social Science and Medicin., 17, 16 (1983) pp. 1205–11.
See, for example, Jana Matson Everett, Women and Social Change in Indi. (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1981),
Shyamala Pappu, ‘Legal Pro-visions — An Assessment’, in Devaki Jain (ed.), Indian Wome. (Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1975).
M.I. Balfour and R. Young, The Work of Medical Women in Indi. (Oxford University Press, 1929).
R. Cassen, India: Population, Economy, Societ. (London: Macmillan, 1980) pp. 145–8.
D. Banerji, Family Planning in Indi. (New Delhi: Progress, 1974).
M. Vicziany, ‘Coercion in a soft state’, Pacific Affair., 55, 3 (1982) pp. 373–402 and 56, 1 (1983).
Family Welfare Programme in India Yearbook 1976–7., (New Delhi: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 1977) pp. 82–3.
Vicziany, ‘Coercion in a soft state’; D.R. Gwatkin, ‘Political will and family planning’, Population and Development Revie., 5, 1 (1979) pp. 29–59;
C.H. Brown, ‘The forced sterilisation programme under the Indian Emergency’, Human Organisatio. 43, 1 (1984) pp. 49–54.
H.S. Gandhi and R. Sapru, Dais as Partners in Maternal Healt. (mimeo; New Delhi: National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, 1980) gives supporting evidence from Meerut District, Uttar Pradesh.
For example, I. Ahmed (ed.), Technology and Rural Women: Conceptual and Empirical Issue. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985);
E. Boserup, Woman’s Role in Economic Developmen. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970);
M. Mukhopadhyay, Silver Shackles: Women and Development in Indi. (Oxford: Oxfam, 1984);
B. Rogers, The Domestication of Wome. (London: Kogan Page, 1979);
K. Young et al. (eds), Of Marriage and the Market: Women’s Subordination in International Perspectiv. (London: C.S.E. Books, 1981).
B. Miller, The Endangered Se. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981).
See, for example Balfour and Young, The Work of Medical Women in Indi. and J.E. Mistry, ‘My experience of the harm wrought by Indian Dais’, extracted in V. Anstey, The Economic Development of Indi. (London: Longman Green, 1936) pp. 489–91.
For an account from Britain see A. Cartwright, The Dignity of Labour? A study of Childbearing and Inductio. (London: Tavistock Publications, 1979).
R. Jeffery, P.M. Jeffery and A. Lyon, ‘Female Infanticide and Am-niocentesis’, Social Science and Medicin., 1984.
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© 1987 Haleh Afshar
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Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R., Lyon, A. (1987). Contaminating States: Midwifery, Childbearing and the State in Rural North India. In: Afshar, H. (eds) Women, State and Ideology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18650-1_9
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