Spatial boundaries and moralities of gender: considerations from obstetric and gynaecological practice in Chennai, South India

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of medical practice and moralities of gender in the context of obstetrics and gynaecology clinics in Chennai, South India. The focus of the article grows out of an attempt to better understand the moral values that underpin obstetric and gynaecological (O&G) practice in relation to female sexuality. Its key concern is the cultural construction of ideal femininity and the way gendered boundaries are put in place to neutralize the sexual potential of the medical encounter and to protect values around virginity. To deconstruct the ways in which O&G practice works to reinforce these norms, it analyses the configuration of spatial arrangements in the clinics, as well as the discursive strategies employed by medical staff and patients. It also examines how the arrangement of space and speech in the context of the clinic reflect the moral codes that govern female sexuality in South Indian culture more generally. Finally, it shows the depth to which everyday moralities of gender operate in the clinic and how medical practice serves to maintain the boundaries that shape the expectations surrounding femininity and sexuality.

Keywords:

• space
• gender
• femininity
• medicine
• sexuality

Notes

1. Rushdie, Midnight's Children, 3–19.

2. Ibid., 19.

3. Corporation hospitals are a collection of local council hospitals that receive public funding but are not as technically specialized as the government hospitals. These hospitals deliver public health initiatives of the Tamil Nadu government and provide many of the poorer communities of Chennai with an efficient, low-cost health care service.

4. Niranjana, Gender and Space.

5. Ibid., 40–1.

6. Ibid., 13–4.

7. Srivastava, ‘The Masculinity of Dis-location’, 205.

8. In his discussion of Pakistani men's perceptions of women, Walle describes how a woman's moral character depends on role-specific requirements in particular social circumstances. Appearing chaste is an important feature of these requirements, and for unmarried women this means being a virgin. Walle, ‘Virginity vs. Decency’, 110.

9. Young, Presence in the Flesh, 1.

10. Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution’ and Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments.

11. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 120.

12. Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution’.

13. Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage, 317.

14. Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage.

15. Niranjana, Gender and Space, 62.

16. Ibid., 63.

17. Medical termination of pregnancy, the common term for abortion among staff members in O&G clinics. The English word ‘abortion’ is usually used to describe a spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage. The MTP Act prescribes that abortion is legal for married women in order to protect their health. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.

18. MTP Act, 1971, 2004, 3–4 (emphasis mine).

19. See also Anandhi, ‘Women, Work and Abortion’, for further discussion on abortions for unmarried women.

20. Niranjana, Gender and Space, 63.