Quest for Conception Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions by Marcia C. lnhorn. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Abstract

Infertility is normally thought to be a problem for the rich, Western world,
overpopulation the problem of the poor, Third World. But is this dichotomy
built on empirical facts or on racial prejudices? Available statistics surprisingly
reveal an infertility belt from the Sudan and across Africa, where the problem in
certain countries is extremely widespread. This and the AIDS epidemic threaten,
according to Marcia lnhom, to depopulate large areas. In Egypt, official statistics
show the infertility rate lo be 8%, a number Inborn regards as unrealistically
low, but still it is eight times the number in Korea and Thailand. Despite
such high figures, the focus in Egypt is only on hypofertility and family planning.
Even so, the population is stilJ increasing due, says lnhom, to politicians'
and health personnels' ignorance of the dialectic between fertility and infertility.
lnhom goes a long way toward exposing the "overpopulation problem" as a
myth. She takes as her starting point the U.N. declaration of human rights, which
asserts the right of all individuals to found a family, and transfers the focus to
childless Egyptians, which she claims is a muted group.
Quest for Conception is the first comprehensive account of infertility in the
Third World and represents a breakthrough in medical anthropology. Because
this topic is highly gendered, the book also makes an important contribution to
gender studies. Her 100 childless informants from Alexandria are all poor
Muslim women, and Quest for Conception can be read both as a study of poverty
and of female Islamic practice.
lnhom analyzes the extent of infertility, its causes and existing forms of treatment
(both ethno- and biomedical), and potential reforms. Her material is based
on childless women's medical life stories-which often contain an astonishing
variety of treatments. In addition, she has followed them through 15 months of
desperate search for children (1988-89). In all this time, only one(!) succeeded
in giving birth. The others presumably are continuing their restless search for the
child they need in order to realize their one and only career-motherhood. The
women's own experiences and emotional reactions, their subjective understanding
of causes and different methods of treatment, and their strategies are central
to lnhom's very humane ethnography. But this micromaterial is continuously ...