Disciplining the sex ratio: exploring the governmentality of female foeticide in India

Abstract

The ‘girl child’ has attracted a considerable amount of attention in India as an object of policy addressing gender discrimination. This article examines the field of campaigns seeking to address female foeticide and positions the public discourse on the ‘girl child’ and sex selective abortion in India within a broad cultural backdrop of son preference. The article argues that anti-female foeticide campaigns exist within a disciplinary domain of female foeticide which both generates a discourse of saving the ‘girl child’ and also shows attempts to utilise both incentives and punitive measures in carving out a female foeticide carceral space.

Keywords:

• disciplinary power
• female foeticide
• Foucault
• gender
• India
• sex ratio

Notes

1. The term foeticide, while referring to the act of abortion, does not have connotations with anti-abortion or ‘pro-life’ discourses more generally. Instead, female foeticide refers specifically to the conscious termination of pregnancies when the gender of the foetus is identified prenatally as female and the implications this has on society.

2. See UNICEF’s (1993) report on Girls and Women: A UNICEF Development Priority.

3. Suwidha in Hindi means ‘the best way or path’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Navtej Purewal

NAVTEJ PUREWAL is Lecturer in Sociology at The University of Manchester.