Negotiating Intimacies : Sexualities, Birth Control and Poor Households

For far too long, the population problem in India has been seen from the point of view of the policy and statistics of population growth, attempting to control the fertility of poor women without reference to them, their bodies, their needs or their lives. In this book, a hundred women who live in Calcutta\'s slums talk directly about their sexual and birth control experiences. As the facts and stories accumulate, we get a picture of these women\'s lives that is frighteningly bare of choice. The author asks how women\'s income-earning capacities as well as those of their men, their status in their families and their relations with other kin affect their social and sexual autonomy. How does religion influence their birth control choices? Are they satisfied with the course their childbearing careers have taken? Seal goes on to consider whether their interests conform to the ideals of feminist liberation. How far has the movement been able to address the concerns of poor, illiterate, or semi-illiterate women?