Reproductive Rights Of Women

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The reproductive and sexual health and rights of women became a central theme in the united nation’s Cairo Conference held in 1994 that marked a new understanding among world bodies that population and development are inextricably linked, and that women’s empowerment is the key to both. For the first time, the reproductive and sexual health and rights of women became a central element in an international agreement on population and development. In this context, it can be said that reproductive health and women’s rights are mutually linked with each other. The ability to make free and informed choices in reproductive life, including those involving child bearing, underpins self – determination in all other areas of women’s life. Because these …show more content…

Reproductive processes are far from being mere biological events. They cannot be seen in isolation from social reality and are an important factor in the reproduction of patriarchal relations. The term “Patriarchy’ is used here to refer to male domination, to the power relationships by which men dominate women, and to characterize the system, where by women are kept subordinate in a number of ways” . Kamala Bhasin builds on Sylvia Walby’s definition. Walby had pointed out that it is important to understand patriarchy as ‘a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women’. This helps us to reject the notion of biological determination or the notion that every individual man is always in a dominant position and every women in the subordinate. Linked to this system is the ideology that men are superior to women, that women are and should be controlled by men and that women are part of men’s …show more content…

The application of NRT to majority of women is a problematic since they are socially constrained, illiterate and do not have control over their own bodies. So NRTs are sought in which women become passive acceptors/users of methods. Women’s participation itself is minimized. Feminists have shown interconnectedness of spheres of production and reproduction and the necessity to transform both for the emancipation as well as human emancipation. Reproductive scientists, population controllers and policy makers seem to have concentrated mainly on transforming biological reproduction, to make it resemble the production process even more. NRTs have helped women in contraception and unwanted pregnancy but they have not changed unequal gender

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