Abstract
Abstract For sub-Saharan women enrolled in a protocol for assisted reproductive technology (ART), the use of mobile phones entails dual allegiance: toward the services of reproductive medicine and toward their transnational family. Indispensable for medically monitoring women’s reproductive bodies, the mobile phone enters the process for producing female gametes and contributes to the gender asymmetry typical of biomedicalized procreation. It is also used to maintain contacts with transnational family members who, from a distance, obtrude in the woman’s reproductive life. The use of mobile phones extends biomedical power over the woman’s body into her everyday life and the normative power of her transnational family into reproduction. Paradoxically, the mobile telephone allows collateral relatives to support the woman seeking reproduction assistance while also “hypermedicalizing” the woman’s daily life. Also paradoxically, this everyday companion is conductive to individual autonomy while also being used for new forms of surveillance and control. The data come from fieldwork conducted in the greater Paris area between 2011 and 2013 within a network of ART professionals and their patients.
Highlights
MethodologyMy fieldwork was conducted in Île-de-France between 2011 and 2013 within a network of professionals specialized in assisted reproductive technology (ART) and their patients
For sub-Saharan women enrolled in a protocol for assisted reproductive technology (ART), the use of mobile phones entails dual allegiance: toward the services of reproductive medicine and toward their transnational family
This article intends to contribute to the study of how information and communication technology (ICT) take part in constructing a gender hierarchy
Summary
My fieldwork was conducted in Île-de-France between 2011 and 2013 within a network of professionals specialized in ART and their patients This network grouped medical biologists from a private laboratory in Paris, gynecologists in private practice in Paris and in departments to the east and north of Paris (Val-de-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis) and the staff of a private nonprofit hospital in Paris.. Observations of laboratory appointments for tests (blood work, sampling, embryo transfers, etc.) provided me with an overall view of the process of medically assisted reproduction This ethnographic research is based on in-depth interviews embedded in my fieldwork and, in the process of providing ART to patients. The seventeen others were residing in France and managed with difficulty to harmonize the requirements of ART with their jobs – a situation not unlike that of French women (Hertzog, 2014) Their jobs were in cleaning services, child or home care, social work, hairdressing, human resources, hotels, sales, etc. Their marital status is indicated by the addition of “Mrs.” before this modified name
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