Infertility and Assisted Reproduction as violent experiences for Women in Bangladesh: Arts-based Intervention to Address GBV (Arts for I-ARTs)

This interdisciplinary research project proposes engaging with the ways Gender Based Violence (GBV) is constructed within the infertility discourse and treatment for infertility in Bangladesh. We aim to provide evidence to demonstrate how infertility leads to various forms of abuse and co-design art-based interventions. Being childless can have significant consequences for women, such as familial violence, social stigma, emotional abuse, and economic disadvantages. In Bangladesh, a culture in which motherhood is highly idealized clashes with state discourse around population control, resulting in the exclusion of infertility from the policy and hence limited public service causing distress for childless women. To avoid these, those who can afford to, seek ARTs but face 'Obstetric Violence'. ARTs often include a lack of informed consent, intrusive and painful interventions, high costs, harmful bodily extractions, and potential risk of death. However, Infertility and ARTs are rarely recognized as forms of violence. ARTs are often seen as consensual and desirable in the quest for a child. There is very little research in Bangladesh that brings to bear the narratives of exclusion and trauma that infertility and participating in ARTs creates. Drawing upon primary and secondary evidence this research will illustrate how infertility and ARTs can be sources of personal and social violence. Through this project, we aim to redefine the understanding of what constitutes violence in the cultural context of Bangladesh and frame it within the domain of reproductive justice. Given the deep social and cultural silence around this topic, the project is timely and needed. It proposes evidence-based, culturally sensitive art interventions co-developed with women who have experienced infertility and undergone ART treatment. The interventions will include art therapy, theatre performances, documentary films, and art exhibitions utilizing the products of art therapy and media narratives of ARTs to capture the (un)intentional GBV perpetuation,