Uneven reproduction: Gender, race, class, and birth outcomes

Abstract

In the United States adverse reproductive outcomes are often understood in terms of Black and White differentials within the context of US‐centric racism and as an afterlife of slavery. Yet similar racial variances in outcomes are found globally. How might we understand the persistence of adverse reproductive outcomes among Black women compared to White women in transnational contexts? Building on the concept of uneven development, this article uses the framework of uneven reproduction as one way to examine how inequalities are seared on reproducing bodies. Such framing shifts the analysis of adverse reproductive outcomes from a narrow view of racial disparities to one that explains those outcomes because of complex patterns of investment and disinvestment that reconfigure reproduction. In framing reproductive outcomes as uneven reproduction, this paper excavates three distinct historical cases in three geographic areas. Drawing from imperial and colonial contexts we can track different forms of disinvestment that were and continue to be detrimental to Black women.This approach serves as a lens against which to read the persistent racial differentials in reproductive outcomes facilitated by a transhistorical, transnational and intersectional understanding of the constraints that impede Black women's successful reproduction over time and across space.