Advertisements
for Infertility: Using Reproductive Desire to Reinforce Gender Roles
In
media narratives, becoming a mother is portrayed as a pleasant, exciting, and
intriguing experience. The motherhood myth is ingrained in wider patriarchal structures,
which causes a naturalised link between mothering and women. Despite a wide
range of cultural and societal shifts in women's wants over the course of the
20th century, parenting and reproduction have continued to take precedence over
other traditionally assigned responsibilities for women.
In
her edited book, Infertility Around the Globe, anthropologist and novelist
Marcia C. Inhorn writes, "Making babies is how women are supposed to build
adult identities throughout the world, and in non-Western
"developing" civilizations the gendered ramifications of infertility
can be deadly." This is also true of the socio-cultural fabric of India,
where motherhood is elevated to the point where a woman without one is viewed
as "fragmented."
The
gender performances of mothering are affected by these parenting ideas. In the
setting of infertile women in society, dominant conceptions of parenthood
become problematic. Since infertility entails the inability to fulfil a desired
social role, the presence of infertility is conveyed not by the presence of
pathological symptoms but rather by the absence of a desirable state. The
ability to bear children determines the value of women's life in many
communities, both past and contemporary. In India, childlessness is strongly
encouraged.
Infertility
is a condition where the social construction of health and illness is maybe
even more apparent than it is in other conditions. This critical viewpoint
clarifies how an infertility diagnosis is markedly burdened with negative connotations
and qualifies as a disability. As a result of this "invisible
impairment" within the cultural construction of gendered reproduction,
fertility clinics have become increasingly popular in India. A significant
socio-cultural discourse on gender roles, motherhood, body politics, and the
burgeoning fertility industry in India is called into question by the
medicalization of infertility.
In
terms of commercial assisted reproductive technology, India is a leader. In
India, the scientific and healthcare industries, as well as procreative
technology, have taken over the culture. The concept of "test-tube"
children has become more commonplace because to popular culture, print and
electronic media, and the thriving IVF (in vitro fertilisation) clinic industry
in India.
In
the 1990s, India became a market for assisted reproductive technology as a
result of the emergence of globalisation and other liberal economic policies.
Infertility was medicalized in the nineteenth century, turning sufferers into
patients. In the twenty-first century, with the rise of new reproductive
technologies and the diabolical confluence of neoliberalism, globalisation,
free market capitalism, the same patients became consumers.
As
gendered technologies, assisted reproductive technologies themselves have very
specific and distinct applications on the bodies of men and women (Konrad
1998). The commodification of human desires opens up a market when social or
medical priorities are linked to unpredictable consequences from a
cultural-economic perspective. Through the "microphysics of power,"
to use Foucault's the phrase, desire is crucial in supporting the societal
norms of fertility behaviour.
Capitalism
performs best when it observes people's most valued desires and tailors this
information to keep consumerism in motion. The market for assisted reproduction
technology employs dynamic advertising methods through the employment of street
hoardings, wall advertisements, posters with exquisite designs, fantastic
websites, and media, print, and institutional advertisements.
Images
of happy babies, perplexing statistics, and good pregnancy test results are
frequently used in infertility commercials to highlight the commercial nature
of reproductive technologies and entice customers to choose their clinics over
those of their corporate rivals.
In
order to instill a sense of reproductive desire in infertile women, advertising
serves as an ideological arm of the fertility markets. Reproductive desire is
both a social construct and a deeply personal emotion. Different types of
reproductive impulses are processed and shaped by culture, economy, religion,
gender, and technology.
The
global capital sectors' propagation of maternal stereotypes encourages
stigmatised women to participate in experimental medical operations. The
institutional promotion of procreative technology breakthroughs has been
crucial in normalising assisted conception in India. The widespread
availability of health-related information on the Internet is changing how
Indians obtain medical care.
The
assisted reproductive market technology in India has been significantly
impacted by this online revolution. The websites of fertility clinics highlight
a number of fascinating facts like cutting edge technology, patient
testimonials, and IVF success rates to entice patients to join them on a
life-changing medical adventure.
The
cost of assisted reproductive technology is high. Each IVF cycle costs between
60,000 and 2 lakh rupees, therefore the financial hardship increases anxiety
and trauma in those receiving reproductive treatments. Clinics in India are
still able to advertise much greater success rates than they actually have due
to a lack of regulation in the markets for assisted reproductive technology,
and the implications of this can be disastrous. The financial burden for the
individuals undergoing treatment procedures, the agonising wait for conception,
and stories of worry and sadness following failure IVF treatments do not make it
into popular media narratives.
Man-Made
Women: How the Contemporary Reproductive Technologies Affect Women, a seminal
study by Gene Corea, explores how new reproductive technologies administer
patriarchal norms and objectify women's procreative capacity. According to
Corea, women are entangled in all-pervasive, irresistible natalism that compels
them to procreate. This situation leads them to a well-known turning point
where the idea of reproduction becomes ingrained in their minds.
The
primary location of fertility issues is the woman, regardless of which spouse
has a "problem." Her body serves as the site for in vitro
fertilisation or artificial insemination (IVF). In order to support gender
power structures and attempt to define the performativity of gender, fertility
markets employ the narrative space of marketing.
The
female body is that which attracts a doctor's attention the most. The IVF
procedure is the most widely used treatment option in the fertility market.
This low cost, low success, moderately unsafe innovation has become the
standard treatment for involuntary childlessness in part because of the
construction of professional and popular discourses that exaggerate its
triumphs, misrepresent its victories, and lionise the institutional system of
provision—the traditional hospital-based, male-dominated medical hierarchy.
These pro-choice industries profit off patriarchy, deprivation, and the media.
Malicious
Medicine: My Experience with Fraud and Falsehood in Infertility Clinics,
written by Anita Jayadevan, is an interesting book that details the methods and
medical diagnosis fertility clinics use to treat infertility. In the guise of
assisted reproductive technology, these clinics circulate and (re)produce
normativity.
The
author describes the mental anguish and physical ordeal she underwent. It
further demonstrates the crucial responsibilities that doctors play in
generating profits at the expense of consumers. "We remembered seeing a full-page,
an ostentatious advertisement for a clinic on January 31, 2000, in a
prestigious publication. The facility was advertised as having reliable systems
that could treat infertility (Jayadevan, 14).
As
a result of the fusion of science, technology, industry, and society, these
campaign narratives populate ideals that are ingrained in our culture. She
calls for the establishment of an oversight organisation for assisted
reproductive technology in India through the publication of this narrative.
These
stories successfully apply the standard gender politics strategies and elevate
parenting as a result. The dynamic results of shifting socioeconomic,
technological, and biological conditions are health and health services.
Assisted reproductive technologies go beyond simple technological advancements.
They have a significant impact on the social norms and power structures that
are now in place.
People
frequently miss the marketing technique used by the fertility companies to
incite a desire for reproduction in the former patients who are now sufferers.
They prioritise consuming patterns above all else, which makes women the object
of exploitation and servitude.