Marketing Reproduction?: Political Rhetoric and Gender Policy in India (Hardback)  | Released: 02 Jul 2004

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Cairo, 1994, set into force a new discourse within India's population policyscape. The language of 'reproductive and sexual health and rights', 'empowerment', and 'quality of care' entered the official vocabulary of bureaucrats and family planning providers in the mid-1990s with promise of real change for women. The 1990s also entertained another discourse shift in India ? as neo-liberal economic reforms gained influence, the lexicon of the market introduced ?choice?, ?clients and consumers? and ?efficiency? into our policy language. What implications do these contradictory ideologies have for gender policy in India? At one level, Marketing Reproduction deconstructs the Reproductive and Child Health policy (RCH) revealing the layers of meaning embedded in the state?s gender rhetoric. But Simon-Kumar?s analysis grapples with wider contemporary issues ? the construction of women, citizenship and reproduction in neo-liberal India, and the de-politicisation of feminism as gender is mainstreamed into the state.