Pregnancy and Childbirth: Joy or Despair? Women and Gender-Generated Crimes of Violence (review)

A team of researchers from the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research and Educational Trust (WLSA) has published this book as part of their three-year study to document how women fare in the justice delivery system of Zimbabwe. The book focuses on the "gender-generated crimes of violence"—abortion, infanticide, concealment of birth and baby dumping—and tries to place these crimes in a larger social and economic context of gender inequality in Zimbabwe; it examines how women who have committed such crimes are reported to the authorities, charged, tried, sentenced, and rehabilitated. The book's conclusion gives concrete recommendations for improving the ways in which such crimes are handled, focusing on prevention and rehabilitation.

A critical reader of this book may point immediately to the lack of coherent methodology, inadequate data due to the secrecy of the topic (compounded by Zimbabwe's political situation at the time of the fieldwork), and conclusions that are not drawn from a rigorous analysis of empirical data or theoretical argument. However, despite the book's limitations, it holds merit on two levels. First, it raises difficult topics for critical analysis—issues that are not yet resolved, either judicially or theoretically, in contexts where gender relations are more egalitarian and institutionalized discrimination less common than in Zimbabwe. Second, it documents in honest and candid ways a process of social change on gender issues.

The crimes analyzed are "women-only" crimes and "survival" crimes—"crimes committed by women in order to remove a perceived threat to women's social, cultural and economic survival" (23). The authors are clear that they are not apologists for the women who commit these crimes, but instead seek to understand the social circumstances that produce such women as "criminals." Thus the book begins with an outline of the control of female sexuality by male relatives and Zimbabwean society at large, including restrictions on reproduction such as birth control or abortion. While most of the examples from women who committed such crimes indicate difficult social discrimination and extreme poverty, "a woman stands alone in the dock when criminal charges are preferred against her for abortion and other reproductive role related crimes" (28).

The practical implications of the legal system are central to the presentation. For example, abortion is possible as a "lawful termination of pregnancy" if certain conditions are met (risk to mother's life, probability that child will have a serious handicap, or pregnancy resulting from unlawful sexual intercourse, i.e. rape or incest). However, even in circumstances that meet the conditions, the process required to obtain a lawful termination is prohibitively bureaucratic. Indeed, the examples expose a particularly capricious legal system for women accused of reproductive-related crimes, extending beyond the underresourced police, courts, and prisons; in this context the crimes of baby killing prove very difficult to address. Outside the judicial system the authors establish an important link between the crimes reviewed and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies through contraception and sex education. While there are many compelling reasons to support both interventions for the benefit of women and their communities, it is probably not realistic to expect that a large proportion of women whose circumstances are so grave as to push them to terminate their own pregnancy or kill their child are likely to use contraception in ways that would prevent such circumstances from occurring.

At a different level, this book documents the process of transforming local gender relations through candid reflections by the researchers on these issues—such as the changing landscape for legalized abortion and the complexities of sex education. The project appears to have served as an opportunity for the researchers themselves to come to terms with these issues. With their clear ideological commitment, the authors advocate "activist research" and mobilizing...