ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the ways in which South Asian women have been reproduced in debates relating to son preference and sex selection. Hegemonic modes of understanding South Asian women have relied upon the reproductive sphere as a means of locating South Asian women’s perceived cultural and gender locations. The perception of South Asian women as both victims and actors in the act of female feticide has been a problematic. Particular spectacles of culture, such as female infanticide and feticide, have offered an oblique lens through which South Asian women have been understood. The conflation of culture and patriarchy unduly pathologizes South Asian women under a double burden of culture and sexism, whereas other Western/white women only confront sexism. The implications of these readings are that they present a picture of South Asian women’s reproductive experiences within a framework largely informed by culture rather than by feminism or women ’s movements, as is the case within more mainstream discourses.
