Gender scripts and unwanted pregnancy among urban Kenyan women

Abstract

Women's lived experiences and lay accounts of unwanted pregnancy remain poorly interrogated. We investigated portrayals of unwanted pregnancy using narrative data gathered from 80 women in Nairobi, Kenya. Unwanted pregnancy had a diversity of significance for the women. Pregnancies were not simply unwanted because they occurred when women became pregnant without wanting to. Rather, pregnancies were considered unwanted largely because they had occurred in contexts that did not reinforce socially-sanctioned notions of motherhood and ‘proper’ procreation and/or revealed women's use of their sexuality in ways deemed culturally-inappropriate. Kenyan women's invocation of femininity scripts to explain unwanted pregnancy; the centrality of gender in everyday life in contemporary Kenya; women's and girls' poor access to effective family planning services; growing female poverty; and Kenya's restrictive abortion policy imply that unwanted pregnancy and its consequences will persist in the country. Addressing unwanted pregnancy and its consequences requires making accessible quality contraceptive and abortion services as well as sexuality information. It also calls for providers who understand the socio-cultural norms that circumscribe fertility and reproductive behaviours.