JAPANESE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH: SPACE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH TALK AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN’S COLLEGES
Date
2023-07-06
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Abstract
This project examines Japanese college students’ experiences with reproductive health care and information access in Japan. I engage with participants’ stories to understand the complexity of the issues around sexual and reproductive health rights in Japan, identify the barriers to accessing care and knowledge, and learn how they overcome the barriers with constraints. Each participant offers their perspectives on reproductive health and experience as a person who lives in Japan, who attends a women’s college, and who is in their early twenties in this project. I use a feminist methodological approach, Interpretive Phenomenological Approach, and feminist usage of Foucault’s theoretical framework of biopower/biopolitics to analyze and deeply engage with the participant’s embodied knowledge. With an interdisciplinary approach, I focus on the participant’s own interpretation of their experiences and of the world they live in. Additionally, I interpret what participants are noticing about how complex social structures, norms, policies, and interpersonal relationships intersect with women’s experiences with reproductive health in Japan. Participants shared their stories within the category of visible, invisible, and shifting reproductive health topics. Visible topics are the focus of society for resolution as well as a heightened focus on gender discrimination. On the other hand, invisible topics are not often talked about in public spaces and women’s embodied experiences are kept silent as they are sources of stigma, discomfort, and discrimination. Lastly, shifting topics can appear or disappear in certain spaces and in contexts. Through this project, it is identified that Japanese women, who are mainly the center of the reproductive health discourse, are not noticing themselves as articulating their thoughts within the framework of reproductive health. With social norms, stigmas, and political ideologies that often discourage women from having conversations about their bodies and health, I suggest that women’s colleges have the possibilities as a space for women to feel empowered, build self-efficacy and self-affirmation, gain knowledge and skills to confidently exchange their thoughts and experiences with reproductive health in Japan, which then leads to the promotion of reproductive health care and information access.
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Reproductive Health, Japan, Transnational, Gender Discrimination, Qualitative Research, Social Norms, Stigma, Biopolitics, Biopower, Empowerment, Health Intervention