Accepted Panels

Through this ethnographic exploration, we understand how the bodies of women are medicalized and dehumanized to a set of organs that can be altered/ mutilated as part of larger gendered discourses of productivity among the migrant sugarcane-cutting community of rural Maharashtra, India. Women's bodies are often perceived unfit for the androcentric workplace but in an agrarian setting which has patriarchal structures deeply embedded within, reproduces legitimate structures that make bodies a site of violence. In discourses of being productive labour menstruating bodies are considered hindrances that can be mutilated through hysterectomies as a one-stop solution to make them fit for the labour market. Negotiating their survival in the male-centric neo-liberal agrarian labour market, women not only lose their agency over their bodies but also their minds. The paper uses the theoretical lenses of Eliot Freidson's "Professional Dominance" and the creation of a ‘Habitus’ given by Pierre Bourdieu to understand how medical professionals legitimize their knowledge as incontestable and authentic. The prescription of hysterectomy coming from incontestable sources leaves women migrant agricultural labours convinced that hysterectomy is an unavoidable and urgent medical requisite.