Taali do haath se bajti hai (it takes two to tango): exploring men’s involvement in antenatal care in India

(For full abstract, including footnotes, see thesis PDF.) This PhD thesis explores the concept of men’s involvement in antenatal care in India, asking: In what ways is men’s involvement in antenatal care conceptualised, experienced, and operationalised in an informal settlement of Delhi? To answer this question, I use the Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSMM) framework, which has emerged as a popular tool within the feminist literature to study men’s lives. The research for this thesis was conducted in Rajaji Nagar, an urban informal settlement in South-East Delhi, spread over a period of 12 months from July 2019 to August 2020. It began with in-person fieldwork in Rajaji Nagar, although this ceased in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thereafter, some research (interviews with policy practitioners) was conducted online. My findings suggest that there is an all-encompassing exclusion of men from the Indian State’s policies on maternal reproductive health. This exclusion can be attributed to four reasons which also intersect with each other: a) maternalist bias of the State in policymaking, b) the cultural significance of reproduction that places the burden of good maternal health outcomes on women, c) a neoliberal approach towards achieving development goals, and d) ignoring the relationality of reproduction processes. This thesis also argues that community health workers (who are all women) are not very keen to involve and engage with expectant fathers. The reasons behind this lack of engagement include their low benchmark of expectations from local men, their lack of agency and power to challenge hegemonic masculine norms, a desire to maintain their dominance as authoritative figures on maternal reproductive health in the community, and finally, given their incentive-based incomes, the lack of any financial gains for engaging with men as stakeholders. Finally, my research with expectant fathers reveals that they leverage their subjectivities to construct and perform their masculinities during expectant fatherhood in different ways. These masculinities are also constructed and performed in relation to their family members, most notably their mothers. However, men’s involvement in maternal health does not indicate any radical disruption of gender relations and power dynamics in the household or the community. Overall, this thesis offers insights into the multiple ways through which men’s involvement in maternal health is imagined and operationalised. The exclusion of men from maternal health policymaking and planning by the State is, in practice, reproduced in Rajaji Nagar by the community health workers and the society. While the thesis finds that some men are engaging in antenatal care of their wives in more ways than they are expected to, there are no social, cultural and institutional mechanisms and ecosystems to facilitate their engagement and encourage it further.