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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Militarism, Gender and Reproductive Suffering: The Case of Abortion in Western Dinka
Author:Jok, Jok MadutISNI
Year:1999
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:69
Issue:2
Pages:194-212
Language:English
Geographic term:Sudan
Subjects:Dinka
sexuality
abortion
Health and Nutrition
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Women's Issues
Health, Nutrition, and Medicine
Cultural Roles
Fertility and Infertility
Sex Roles
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161022
Abstract:This article addresses the issue of abortion and reproductive suffering among the Dinka in an emergency relief centre called Akon and in a number of adjacent villages in southwestern Sudan. It draws on the findings of an eighteen-month research project conducted during the period 1993-1995. The primary concern of the project was the documentation of women's responses to the upheavals of the civil war, which included the destruction of the subsistence economy and the disruption of family networks. The author elicited information on reproductive behaviours through in-depth interviews and group discussions with a randomly selected core sample of twenty displaced women and forty other women in the host communities. He shows that the war has caused families to desire many children to make up for the high wartime infant mortality rate. The resultant social breakdown has prompted men to breach the rules of sexuality and sexual taboos to such an extent that women have lost much control over sexual and reproductive decisions. Women in western Dinka, therefore, agree to conceive unwillingly. They also regard pregnancy as a difficult ordeal. Many, however, terminate pregnancy with unsafe techniques that risk infertility. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French.
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