Comment ne pas faire d’enfants ?

Abstract

The “crisis of the pill” of 2012-2013 contributed to challenging the predominance of the contraceptive pill in France, yet without the ascription to women of their responsi- bility for birth control being called into question. This article chooses to focus on the mechanisms of domination, particularly medical and gender, which found and main- tain the various ordinary and invisibilized dimensions of the work resulting from this responsibility. Due to contraception’s medicalisation, this first of all involves showing how responsibility for birth control gradually became female and how, at the same time, the work related to that responsibility remains hidden. This invisibilisation of fe- male work results from naturalizing the constraint contraceptive observance represents and, particularly, the related mental effects. Then too the need for another sort of con- traceptive work is born from the contradiction between an injunction to choice and the limited range of methods really available to women : a cognitive work. Lastly, using a fertility control method implies, and particularly involving a hormonal method, dealing with minimalized, or even denied, side effects. There too, is a form of invisible work – a work on oneself – which this article aims to reveal.

Keywords

• gender
• contraception
• pill
• work