1. "Let Your Ovaries Rest": Pathologizing Hormones in Japan's New Economy.
- Author
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Cheung, S. Y.
- Subjects
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GENITALIA , *OVARIES , *MEDICAL personnel , *REPRODUCTIVE health , *BIRTH control - Abstract
This article analyzes the twenty-first-century adoption of the hormonal contraceptive pill in Japan, where it was not legalized until 1999. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this research combines close readings of popular health media with ethnographic analysis to argue that in the context of a society suffering from low fertility, reproductive health actors, including pharmaceutical representatives, medical experts, and the government, construct the Pill as an everyday therapeutic that rehabilitates women's reproductive systems so that they may have children in the future. In a society experiencing growing labor insecurity and accelerating inequality, reproductive health professionals present women's reproductive systems as having become damaged through overwork and stress. As such, the Pill's new appeal lies in its identity as a therapeutic for hormonal regulation. By eliminating the contingencies of menstruation that interfere with women's workplace productivity while keeping their reproductive systems healthy, the Pill, I argue, extends women's productive and reproductive labor. Advancing material approaches to gender analysis through a feminist technoscience studies perspective, this research shows how the Pill's uses as a multipurpose drug beyond merely birth control disciplines women's bodies on a molecular level according to new gendered expectations that women must both work and reproduce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
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