Short Abstract
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Childbearing pain is simultaneously physical, emotional, and social, varying with cultural contexts. In heteronormative Indian societies, motherhood is believed to be the highest achievement of women's lives. Therefore women's birthing experience is extensively supervised by the institutions of family, marriage, caste, religion, and biomedicine; their expressions and experiences of pain in childbirth are socially silenced and fashioned through definite gender mechanisms. Consequently, Women restrict their expressions of pain by internalizing the male gaze that directs them to be submissive, kind, and tolerable in any socio-biological encounters.