Emma Mavodza | AS 2024
Dr. Emma Mavodza is a fellow at Walter Benjamin Kolleg (2024/25) at the University of Bern and an adjunct researcher in the URPP Human Reproduction Reloaded|H2R at the University of Zurich. Dr. Mavodza is an avid development researcher with a specific focus on the interaction between innovative digital technologies and society. She has multiple research interests including topics on the politics of financial inclusion and exclusion, gender, contribution of local mundane financial and health practices, cultural aspects of reproductive technologies, indigenous knowledge systems -culture, traditions, values, social norms, taboos, among others.
Dr. Mavodza attained her doctoral degree in Development Studies from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. In her doctoral thesis, she examined the social life of digital money in Eswatini and Zimbabwe. Based on her rich ethnographic findings, she rejects some framings of mobile money as financial inclusion and demonstrates how it is intertwined with the socio-economic reproduction of precarity as well as existing social relations, structures, practices, and social meanings of the adoptive communities.
In her current project, Infertility unimagined: Experiences of Black women with In vitro fertilisation (IVF) in South Africa, Dr. Mavodza extends her thematic focus to look at the role of social and cultural norms, established practices, on reproductive technology adoption among historically marginalised communities in South Africa. Specifically, Dr Mavodza explores the reproductive challenges and opportunities faced by Black and brown bodies, particularly how Black women navigate IVF as a technology and a socio-cultural process in South Africa. In this ethnographic study, Dr Mavodza highlights the historical context within which Black people’s reproductive health has been systematically compromised. She argues that there are ways through which the historical treatment and marginalization of Black women in South Africa continue to affect their reproductive choices, decisions, and practices resulting in stratified reproductive outcomes.
Before joining Walter Benjamin Kolleg as a Junior Fellow, Dr. Mavodza was a Lecturer in Eswatini (2016-2021) and an early career research fellow (2023/24) at the Joint Institute for Advanced Studies of ETH, UZH and ZHdK (Collegium Helveticum.)
Research Project
Infertility unimagined: Experiences of Black women with In vitro fertilisation (IVF) in South Africa
Infertility is a major health problem in both developed countries and emerging economies of the global south. Statistically, infertility affects one in six people worldwide (WHO 2023). Although a global problem, most research on infertility and infertility treatments focuses on the Global North. This project seeks to expand our knowledge of reproductive problems and possibilities by exploring the socio-cultural life of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in South Africa. The project focuses on Black women who voluntarily choose to postpone childbearing and are faced with age related fertility decline. The reproductive shift to delay childbearing has led to high demand of ARTs among these women, who seek new possibilities for fulfilling expectations about motherhood and practices of kin making. Fearing the social stigma childlessness, Black women increasingly make use of In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other fertility treatments. To understand the norms and values influencing ARTs usage among Black women in South Africa, this project considers the women’s reproductive health histories, experiences of infertility, reproductive choices, knowledge of ARTs and issues of racialized access. To understand the complex reproductive assemblages, this project employs a qualitative approach using ethnographic methods, participant observation, interviews, and participant diaries to understand the lived experiences of educated Black women in South Africa with selected ARTs. The project addresses the following questions: What are the socio-cultural norms and values concerning reproduction through ARTs? What are the experiences of black, women with IVF? And what does this tell us about the reproductive futures of Black women in South Africa and beyond? The relevance of the project goes beyond the selected sample of Black women in South Africa: apart from methodological empirical and conceptual contributions, the findings and subsequent analysis is critical for decentralising knowledge production about infertility and reproductive technologies within the African context. This is a critical step towards a holistic understanding of the nuances, contradictions, opportunities, and challenges in achieving global reproductive health justice on one hand and diverse normative practices on the other.
Keywords: Age related infertility, In vitro fertilisation, South Africa, Switzerland, ARTs, Reproductive injustice, uneven reproduction
