Navigating Suffering, Stigma, and Social Struggles: Infertile Muslim Women’s Experiences in India

Muslim women in India experience personal pain and societal stigma due to infertility. Yet, their visibility and inclusion in governmental policies and social science research initiatives remain notably lacking. This article thus contributes to an understanding of the power of patriarchy, gender studies, and medical sociology by documenting the missing voices of these women in fertility discourse. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork among urban middle-class and rural poor infertile Muslim women in West Bengal, India, this article identifies three key consequences of infertility: social stigma, severe reproductive suffering, and the dual impact of economic and religious factors on treatment-seeking behavior. The article examines the emotional suffering these women endure as a result of the stigma associated with infertility in a pronatalist context. They experience abandonment, emotional abuse, and social exclusion throughout their lives. However, their narratives reveal they are not passive victims; rather, they make use of various tactics to manage and overcome stigma. Their life histories also reveal the physical impact of infertility, such as pain resulting from infections, menstruation, medications and surgical procedures, a dimension often overlooked or dismissed as not being significantly discomforting. By utilizing body mapping techniques, the women articulated their embodied experiences, allowing the article to present a female-centered perspective on infertility related suffering. Lastly, the article also examines the treatment-seeking behavior of Muslim women, analyzing the impact of economics and religion on infertility and its influence on their choice of treatment seeking from Artificial reproductive Technologies, western biomedicine and ethnomedicine that coexist in India.