Weeping wombs: Leucorrhea and the chronicity of distress in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Abstract

In Gilgit, capital of the Gilgit-Baltistan region in northern Pakistan, leucorrhea - vaginal discharge known in the vernacular as safaid pani, or 'white water' - serves as both a medical diagnosis and signifier of the chronicity of the reproductive, social, and emotional burdens endured by women. While ethnomedical providers explained safaid pani as resulting from relatively benign forms of 'weakness', which required minimal dietary or ethno-botanical recourse, allopathic physicians approached discharge as evidence of numerous pathologies that necessitated protracted and sometimes also expensive treatments. Physicians' clinical assessments were not solely biomedical, but also integrated informal folk and formal ethnomedical theories of causation. Clinical diagnoses that affirmed leucorrhea as a pathophysiology substantiated women's belief that it was proof of the destructive effects of sustained social inequity, peril, and distress on the body, and the uterus in particular. Women and their treating providers recognized the power of the (dys)functional uterus to not only threaten women's reproductive wellness but also their social, marital, and familial status, which hinged on their ability to become pregnant and give birth, to sons especially. Because of the ailing uterus's expansive importance, weeping wombs served as a potent source for women's claims making and calls for attention and care.