A gendered memory of pain: women's birthing body from the socialist past to globalizing China

With a feminist critical perspective, this paper examines ways labor pain management of childbirth in China from the early 50s’ to current period. Through the tragedy of laboring women, Ma Rongrong’s suicide in the hospital in 2017, I reviewed factors behind the inaccessibility of labor analgesia in China, early governmental attempts in relieving labor pain as a political statement following the Soviet Union, and how and why labor pain has always been put on a secondary place in the context of medicalized childbirth in China. I argue that the early attempts are results of political ideology’s practice and disputes rather than medical progress, and women’s reproductive body in labor became the embodied site. In addition, women’s reproductive bodies are now situated in between medical intervention, state’s population policy and other socio-cultural impacts, shaping women as subjects capable of giving birth but not subjective to pain. I also correlate the recent advancement of labor analgesia with the termination of the One-Child Policy, arguing that the recent governmental attempts to promote labor analgesia as a means to ensure their expectancy of two children per family. My discussion also includes contents analysis of media representations that speak and act out women’s memories and perceptions of labor pain. In addition, I will talk about governmental and non-governmental efforts in promoting labor pain management in recent China, and how do the need and market of labor analgesia influence the culture of childbirth.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference