Women, Body Politics and the Dominant Health Discourses: A Sociological Study in Orrisa

Abstract

The study attempts to explain how health discourses contribute towards maintaining the gender inequality by constructing women's body and reproductive roles in particular ways. In order to examine different health discourses, the study has focllsed OR the state health discourse, as wen as the community discourse of health. The focus of these discrete discourses not only provide different arenas for understanding health paradigms vis-a.-vis women's body and gender roles, but suggests how these discourses are interlinked through their patriarchal hegemony.