Women's Reproductive Labor (Free Essay Example)

Medicalization, industrial modernity, and progress have brought forth new innovations that directly impact women. Birth control methods have become widespread. Pregnancy has become a prevalent topic of discussion in medical and social discourse. Papanicolaou vaginal smear tests and mammograms have become routine. The baby bottle has become a status symbol. Women have acquired more opportunities outside of the domestic realm. Together, these developments have radically changed the labor of women within society. They also demonstrate the depth at which modernity has impacted women’s bodies. As medicalization, industrial modernity, and progress prevail, female bodily labor increasingly becomes a tool for the state and the subject of its intervention.

With medicalization and modernization, methods emerge through which women's reproductive labor can be restricted by the state. While birth control can give birthing bodies autonomy in their reproduction, it is also used as a method through which the state can control their reproductive capabilities according to its own agenda. Illich discusses the engineering approach to the making of economically productive adults which makes “the possibility of eugenic birth control a preferred theme for international congresses in the seventies.” (Illich, 65) Innovations in pregnancy prevention methods served not just as a method for family planning, but population planning by the state. This product of modernity allowed for increased state control of and intervention in the bodily labor of women. Ultimately, these advancements subjected women's bodies to abuse by the state. Pinker, too, expands upon the restriction of women’s reproductive bodily labor. Pinker writes, “Population-control programs in India and China (especially under China’s one-child policy) coerced women into sterilizations, abortions, and being implanted with painful and septic IUDs.” (Pinker, Tuesday, 29) Developments in reproductive control methods, in turn, give control to the state in the reproduction of its female citizens. Birth control facilitates population control and family planning facilitates population planning. 

With medicalization and modernization also stems an increase in the state promotion of the reproductive labor of women. This bodily labor is, in turn, a method through which the state can acquire biocapital. The emphasis placed on the reproductive capacity of women’s bodies grants the fetus they carry greater autonomy and importance than the mother carrying it. Illich writes, “In fact, the zygote is on the way toward acquiring legal status as a human subject, partly because the Pope and constitutional jurists imply that its genome and cytoplasm have the potential to develop into a self by recognizing the ‘other’ — in this case, the mother.” The human being carrying the fetus is no longer of importance but is rather reduced to ‘a life’ upon which ethics committees can pass judgments. The reproductive bodily labor of women is trapped within the jurisdictional realm of the state. Furthermore, the hospitalization of births, prenatal medical visits, and the appraisal of healthy individuals based on reproductive capabilities demonstrate the involuntary gestation of state ideologies. Illich explains, “Diagnosis may exclude a human being with bad genes from being born, another from promotion, and a third from political life.” (Illich, 68) The mass hunt for health risks begins with dragnets designed to apprehend those needing special protection, which is particularly evident in the treatment of and intervention in pregnant bodies. The value of a woman’s body and labor is reduced to their capacity to provide profit in the form of biocapital for the state. This, in turn, incentivises state intervention in the birthing labor of women’s bodies.

Modernization has furthered the medical and social influence on women's bodily labor on a biological level. While medical interventions such as the pap smear have proven to increase the survival rate of cervical cancer, there is little evidence of effective treatment of most other cancers. For example, “The five-year survival rate in breast-cancer cases is 50 percent, regardless of the frequency of medical check-ups and regardless of the treatment used. Nor is there evidence that the rate differs from that among untreated women.” (Illich, 26) Modernization has significantly increased medical surveillance of women’s bodies. When this surveillance has proven to do little to treat and cure the bodies of women, it proves more valuable as a method through which women's biologies are monitored and controlled by state institutions. Social ideologies derived from modernization further influence the biological labor of women. Illich writes, “As the bottle became a status symbol, new illnesses appeared among children who had been denied the breast, and since mothers lack traditional know-how to deal with babies who do not behave like sucklings, babies became new consumers of medical attention and of its risks.” (Illich, 65-66) Once again, the mother is constructed into the unimportant “other”. Thus, innovations such as the development of formula as replacement for breast milk have reduced the societal value of female biology and bodily labor. 

Industrial modernity and progress have served to increase the labor of women outside of the domestic realm. This, in turn, increases their profitability and productivity for the state. Pinker writes, “But in most times and places housework is gendered, so the liberation of humankind from household labor is in practice the liberation of women from household labor. Perhaps the liberation of women in general.” (Pinker, Tuesday, 42) With modernization emerged a transition of female labor outside of the home. Women's labor, in turn, is now more than ever performed in a realm that is highly monitored and controlled by the state. Pinker continues, “In earlier times, women’s list of responsibilities rarely extended beyond the domestic sphere. Today young women increasingly say that their life goals include career, family, marriage, money, recreation, friendship, experience, correcting social inequities, being a leader in their community, and making a contribution to society.” (Pinker, Thursday, 30) With industrial modernization and progress comes increased expectations for the labor of women and their bodies. The pre-existing labor including child rearing remains, but it is compounded with state-incentivized labor. Thus, the new opportunities presented to women facilitate new ways in which their labor and bodies can profit the state and be the subject of its intervention. 

Women’s liberation depends upon control over one’s body. Medicalization, industrial modernity, and progress subject womens bodies to state control. In turn, state power is maximized and society moves farther from women's liberation.