Naturalização e medicalização do corpo feminino: o controle social por meio da reprodução

Abstract

This study discusses, through bibliographic research, the recurrence of naturalization as basis for the medicalization of the female body, as a means of social control through biological reproduction, whereby behavioral standards, social class, ethnic and race differences are rearranged/redefined. Through this process, male patriarchal and class predominance is maintained and the rift of social and gender inequalities grow wider. It is important to identify the role of technological developments and their complexities -which do not allow lowerincome classes to take decisions in regard to their own bodies and reproductive health -and schooling, specially through science and physical education classes whereby upper-class predominance is sustained. This study is part of a literature review for the development of the doctoral thesis about infertility. However, it is important to clarify the historical process referred in our study. The XIII century brings the emergence of Medicine as an area of technical and scientific knowledge of male domain that since then, it is increasingly involved in the interests of population control, disciplinarization of the workforce and hygienization of space and social relations.But these concerns vary according to contexts and times. Thus, among the XIX and XX centuries, the existence of an overpopulated European continent should be considered in opposition to Americas, by demanding settlement, absorbed immigrants, and also, discussions and ideas from Europe. The Eugenic ideals, for example, characterize the colonial phase of European imperialism, ongoing since the end of the XIX century, are visible in Brazil only in the second decade of the XX century.However, discursively linked to the improvement of race and population development, the eugenics took so aggressive and destructive under the Nazi-fascism in Europe in the decades of 30-40 of the XX century, forms that covered the need for control of the industry workforce and the struggles of social classes for distribution of wealth and socialist ideals.In the global scenario of the XXI century, the spread of the reproduction issues in newspapers of great range, with headlines that highlighted the increased fertility in the slum, and the higher birth rate among adolescents in low-income classes, and illustrates the importance of this subject today and more: the perpetuation of a hierarchy of genders and maintenance of the biopolitic strategy mentioned by Foucault (1989), in which [...] The current forms of medicine organization and the complexity of the technology associated with them ... in many cases withdraw or increase the withdrawal of the participation of common people from decision-making regarding their own body, for their well-being and in the limit, the fate of their lives. (Corrêa, 2001, p.25).This study is part of a literature review for the development of the doctoral thesis of the Post-Graduate Program in Bioscience and Health Education -Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC) / Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) on the recurrence o...

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