(Re)producing Gender and Risk Through Contraceptive Development: The Case of the Pill

• In Event: 187 - Regular Session. Rethinking Reproductive Risks

Abstract

Ever since the development of the contraceptive pill for women in the 1960s, hormonal contraceptive technologies have attracted wide attention and have been surrounded by numerous controversies. For many, they have been seen as a source of empowerment for women. Other have seen them as a sign of moral decline within Western societies and not only. However, the function and purpose of hormonal contraceptives is decided and negotiated by multiple actors and groups through multiple ways. Normative conceptions about gender especially affect the research and trial processes that underlie hormonal contraceptives. Such conceptions are reinforced through what Science and Technology (STS) scholars call the coproduction of technology and identity. I will use this framework along with considerations on the social construction of technology in order to analyze how gender and hormonal contraceptive technologies are coproduced. This paper argues that the coproduction of gender and technology takes place through the development of hormonal contraceptives for both men and women. Although male contraceptives do not currently exist on the market, it is stressed here that looking at the failed development stages can illuminate the vastly different ways in which gender plays out in technological construction, depending on the users towards which the technology is geared. The factors considered here to explain the coproduction of gender and technology are inequalities in risk-assessment, different conceptualizations of sexuality and well-being for the two genders, as well the way in which the benefits of existing technologies are presented to potential consumers.

Author

• Alina Geampana, McGill University