Abstracts Womens Studies

“It's fine, I’ll figure it out on my own”: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Women’s Experiences of Work Accessing Reproductive and Sexual Health Care in Brantford, Ontario

by Jeanette Pickett Pierce

Informed by reproductive justice theory and intersectionality, and drawing on the method of institutional ethnography, this dissertation investigates the effects of neoliberal and postfeminist discourses on young women’s experiences of accessing reproductive and sexual health (RSH) care in the City of Brantford and the County of Brant, Ontario. Like many other municipalities in Ontario, this area has been affected by cuts to public health services, including RSH care. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 young women (17 to 29 years old) and 4 key informants involved in RSH care provision, to examine the work (and “workarounds”) that young women engage in to secure RSH care. My analysis illustrates that young women engage in a great deal of work to access RSH care in Brantford and Brant County, including: (i) the work of becoming informed about RSH services (e.g., conducting internet searches, gaining knowledge through social relationships); (ii) working within/around institutional constraints (exercising persistence and adapt-ability to sudden changes at the systems level); and (iii) the work of waiting (demonstrating perseverance through waiting periods). I discuss these findings in relation to neoliberal and postfeminist constructions of responsible citizenship where young women are compelled to embrace the duties of self-determination and autonomy yet find themselves frustrated when they are presented with multiple barriers to finding and receiving the care they seek (e.g., contraception, abortion). This study complicates and contributes to understandings of access by making visible the work the young women must do to access RSH care as well as the ruling relations that organize this access work at translocal (policy) and local levels (stigma, secrecy). I suggest that the work required to secure care demonstrates deservingness within a resource-constrained context and I consider the intersectional dimensions of this deservingness. Finally, I explore the political dimensions of “waiting” for care whereby waiting is experienced as an anticipated and necessary inconvenience that women must “work through” to ensure that their RSH care needs are met. These findings illustrate the perseverance that young women must engage to secure access to contraception, abortion, and other forms of RSH care despite their rights to universal access.