Ithaca College

Anthropology major Melendy Krantz '09 presented her paper, "Constructing Masculine Pregnancies: A Comparison of Social Interpretations of Reproduction among Middle Class American Women and Egyptian Bedouin Women," at the Women, Home, and Nation: Private and Public Spaces conference, held March 14-15 at Binghamton University. Melendy was the only undergraduate student to present at the conference.

Melendy's paper focused on how pregnancies are "masculinized" based on how they are culturally constructed and interpreted.

Abstract

Pregnancy is one of the most feminine aspects of the human body, yet it is masculinized in both American middle class and Egyptian Bedouin culture. The construction of legitimacy and the ability to move between the private and the public spheres dictate the ways in which pregnancies are masculinized. Based on the ways in which they are masculinized, women's communities develop and disappear because a woman's community is a way of creating a gendered balance in the greater culture. American middle class women do not need a women's community since masculinization has inundated all aspects of their lives. Bedouin women do need a women's community because practices like giving birth are confined to that space.