Ethnic Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies Departments sponsor talk on Biopolitics of Contraceptives
UC Riverside Professor to Discuss Biopolitics of Contraceptives Feb. 8 at Cal Poly
Chikako Takeshita, professor of women’s studies at UC Riverside, will present “How Science Constructs Women and Their Bodies -- Half a Century of IUD Development,” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, in Room 215 in the Science North Building at Cal Poly.
In its more than five decades of use, the intrauterine device (IUD) has been regarded as a means for women's reproductive autonomy and a convenient form of birth control as well as a coercive tool of state-imposed population control and threat to women's health, according to Takeshita.
In her talk, she will explore the possibility that the IUD is both empowering and oppressive at the same time. She will discuss how the IUD functions as a "politically versatile technology," adaptable to both feminist and non-feminist reproductive politics. In particular, she will focus on the particular ways in which social interests and assumptions about race, class and female sexuality guide scientific inquiries and technological development. She will also examine what counts as an appropriate mechanism to manage women's fertility in the developing and developed world.
Takeshita’s work demonstrates that various social interests, including the desire to restrict global population, the threat of medical malpractice litigations, attacks from parties opposed to abortion, and women's aspiration for better reproductive control have all played a significant role in directing scientific research on the device.
Her new book, The Biopolitics of Contraceptive Development: Population, Women's Bodies, and the IUD, traces the development of the intrauterine device from the 1960s to the present.
The talk is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Cal Poly’s College of Liberal Arts Lottery Funds, Gender Equity Center, and the Ethnic Studies and Women's & Gender Studies departments. For more information, contact the Women’s & Gender Studies Department at 805-756‐1525 or wgs@calpoly.edu.
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