Pitfalls of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare of Women in India

Abstract

The practice of obstetrics and gynaecology (OB/GYN) has historically been dominated by men and was brought into existence as a replacement for midwifery, a woman-centered model of care, by women, which was deemed unscientific. Instead of improving on this model, they built their own as they considered women weak, naïve, and irrational to understand the ‘complex science’.1 They called midwifery unscientific while conducting unethical experiments on enslaved women without anaesthesia and practicing eugenics.2 The practice has deep patriarchal origins. They viewed woman as a machine to be repaired. Over time, women started to re-enter the field only to work in the same technocratic and misogynistic model.3-5