Translating Rights into Agency

This book explores the complexity and diversity of reproductive agency performed by Chinese women. It defines reproductive agency as the ability to make free reproductive and parenting choices and having a space to express emotions and speeches that re-appropriate, reflect on and criticise any oppressive and/or harmful reproductive practises and policies. The emotional, linguistic and behavioural forms of reproductive agency exercised by four different cohorts of women are represented in this thesis. This thesis advocates for reproductive agency, along with emphasising gender performativity to disrupt the patriarchal birth planning institution, patrilineal and patriarchal family, son preference, essential motherhood and compulsory heterosexual marriage for reproduction in China.