Moje telo, ja: kontracepcija
My body, Me: Contraception

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide preliminary empirical frameworks for the operationalization of the thesis about the “political body”, that is, about the connection of internalized body experience and bodily practices and social norms concerning women’s body. One of the basic dimensions of gendered oppression is achieved through the appropriation of female reproductive capacity and sexuality, which is expressed as the socially constructed loss of control of women over their own bodies (regimes of sexual, marital, reproductive life, regimes of female and male dressing, gender regimes of spacial use, etc.). In operationalizing this goal, in this paper we examined the cultural-political framework of the use of contraception. In the paper, an analysis of empirical data (a survey on the birth culture conducted at the beginning of 2017 on the territory of Serbia and northern Kosovo on a sample of 1,560 women) showed that contraceptive culture is not only a matter of women’s health but rather a matter of women’s emancipation. It is built as a system of values, it is linked to the wider political representations of women about the position and role of women in society, and it is also related to the quality of women’s lives, which depends greatly on whether women will be regarded as having the right to their own body integrity or not. At the same time, the paper questions the idea that free education or even widely accessible contraceptives can automatically change the cultural pattern that affects the low contraceptive culture. In addition, the analysis has shown that the patriarchal system of values does not represent a socio-cultural space in which women feel comfortable even if they conform to patriarchal values. Just the opposite, the higher level of patriarchal values is related to higher feeling of guiltiness, a loss of autonomy and a lower degree of life satisfaction among women.

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