Body politics, reproductive rights, and digital media advocacy within stigmatized contexts: a critical discourse analysis of Weibo discussions on IUDs in modern-day China

ABSTRACT

This article explores prevalent beliefs surrounding the use of IUDs among Chinese women and how such discourses intersect with issues of gender, culture, and politics. Incorporating a critical health communication perspective and the framework of body politics, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of 420 Weibo posts discussing IUDs. We investigated the nuanced ways in which Chinese women reflect upon, resist, and redefine prevailing stigmatizing narratives regarding women’s reproductive health and contraception, which often overshadow discussions on medical risks and women’s autonomy in fertility choices. The analysis reveals that contemporary women’s online discourses resist traditional gender roles and historical glorification of one-child families by empathizing with their mothers and reconstructing the collective memory of China’s family planning era. Simultaneously, their narratives reinforce the national policy of promoting childbirth and patriarchal discipline by highlighting proactive IUD removal to enable pregnancy and fostering competition among women, without interrogating the underlying structural issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Intra-uterine device (IUD)
• China
• critical health communication
• digital media advocacy
• body politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Post-90s users’ refers to individuals who were born after the 1990s and typically grew up in the digital era, having been exposed to advanced technology and the internet from an early age.