BirthControlEnvirons · Contraception meets the environment: everyday contraceptive practices, politics, and futures in a toxic age

Contraception meets the environment: everyday contraceptive practices, politics, and futures in a toxic age

Young women in France are increasingly turning away from ‘the pill’ for contraception. This shift is packed with meaning: it signals a crisis for the contraceptive method that has been the bedrock of French family planning for more than fifty years, the access to which is still collectively imagined as an emblematic victory of the second wave feminist movement. But also, and most critically, it draws attention to a morphing contraceptive landscape that is less reliant on synthetic hormones. Although not yet properly studied from a qualitative point of view, a few reasons had been suggested for the pill’s loss of popularity, including the growing number of women who oppose the use of the pill due to ‘environmental reasons’ and, more specifically, to concerns with everyday exposure to toxicants. In order to further explore this issue, the main objective of this project was to learn how young women striving for chemical-free contraception negotiate feminist and environmental sensibilities with regards to their contraceptive choices. The research took place in urban France. Three specific objectives were designed to pursue the main one: the first had to do with how this negotiation took place in everyday practices, the second one at the level of political action and the third one entailed the experimental exploration of the intersections of chemical pollution, fertility and the future, through the making a of a short documentary. This project aimed at illuminating three highly relevant issues in contemporary French society: how young people are apprehending and, more than ever, contesting environmental toxicity; the unprecedented change in the perception and use of the contraceptive pill; and how newer, and still understudied, local forms of feminism are mobilizing around the present and future relationship between synthetic hormones and female bodies in an increasingly toxic age. Ultimately, project results help refine our understanding of how the environmental crisis is shaping all aspects of social life, including sexual and reproductive ones.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union