Pregnant Bodies in Corporate Settings: Women’s Strategic Medicalization of Symptoms

• In Event: 360 - Regular Session. Gender and the Body

Abstract

Women’s engagement with obstetric medicine is shaped by their employment context and the medicalization of their embodied symptoms, with some women resisting and some seeking out medical intervention to achieve their reproductive goals. In this paper, we argue that women have sought medical interventions and technologies to achieve pregnancy-ending interventions with the intention of alleviating the pressures of being pregnant and employed in corporate settings. We describe three cases from a larger, longitudinal study on women’s pregnancy experiences to show how obstetric technologies facilitate women’s continued participation in corporate work. These three women shared a perception that their pregnancy symptoms jeopardized their personal and familial well-being, especially in relation to their employment. We identify two major themes, including (1) the constraints of “extra-medical” factors, especially the ways in which high-pressure corporate jobs did not accommodate pregnancy; and (2) the dominant frame of medicalization for all pregnancies that positions health care providers as gatekeepers to medical interventions. Finally, we argue that the dominant frame of medicalization used by the women and health care providers in this study obscures alternative, social-structural explanations for the embodiment of pregnancy symptoms.

Authors

• Danielle Bessett, University of Cincinnati

• Orlaith Heymann, University of Cincinnati