The Female Body: Reproductive Vessels Serving the Nation : An Analytical Discussion of Environmental Pollution and the Swedish Government’s Preconception Dietary Advisories for Women

This master thesis investigates dietary advice regarding polluted seafood consumption aimed at women who potentially can become pregnant. The advisories are communicated by Livsmedelsverket, the Swedish Food Agency. This sort of advice is situated in the realm of preconception health with the intention of reducing risks and optimizing the health of imaginary fetuses. Using Carol Bacchi’s method ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ this study challenges the representation of the ‘problems’ and questions the advisories as a rational response to environmental pollution. Drawing on theories about the risk society, biopolitics and feminist theories about reproduction, preconception health and the consumable body, this study confirms that women are portrayed as always potentially, or already pregnant in preconception health advice. The study also finds that these advisories operate through a gendered biopolitics which reproduces the expectation of women as solely responsible for the nation’s reproduction. While the problem with environmental pollutants is a collective failure in need of global action, the conclusion is that the Swedish state expects women to bear the burden and, to be the solution by mitigating risks and disciplining themselves to secure the health of future generations. By situating women in a discourse of anticipatory motherhood from their own conception, the advisories reproduce the notion of women’s bodies as mere reproductive vessels.