Through an examination of the history of women’s health in this island nation, A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka sets out to answer this question. Darshi Thoradeniya traces women’s health from the initial days of birth control and family planning, to development and population control, to militarization and financialization of women’s bodies. Questioning this ‘success story’, she shows how women’s bodies were framed around the notion of social reproduction for the nation-building project of post-independence Sri Lanka.
Through meticulous research, interviews, policies and advertisements, and oral narratives, the author highlights how the Sri Lankan state made use of women’s health, while at the same time silencing women’s corporeal experiences.
She argues that even though women’s health serves the state-building project and women’s bodies serve the nation-building project, women were neither subjects nor objects of these two projects. Women’s reproductive bodies were, rather, the ground for a complex and competing set of struggles on population, family planning, development, modernization and ethno-nationalism of post-independence Sri Lanka
This book will be a valuable addition to the fields of public health and public policy, history, women’s studies, history of medicine and the sociology of medicine.”
https://www.ices.lk/event-details/a-critical-history-of-womens-health-in-modern-sri-lanka
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
NR (12 janvier 2025). New publication: History of Women’s Health in Sri Lanka. SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS. Consulté le 10 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/132dx