Seminario Permanente di Antropologia Culturale del CREAa 2025-2026

Testing fertility and timing motherhood

Negotiating respectability and reproductive futures through pregnancy and abortion

Intervento di Sandra Manuel (Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique)

Data: 19 maggio 2026

Orario: 14:00 – 16:00

In presenza: presso la Sala Riunioni 2, al II piano di Palazzo Zorzi, Lungadige Porta Vittoria, 17 – 37129 Verona

Online: al seguente link Zoom: https://univr.zoom.us/j/84530612286

Abstract

Young women in peri-urban Maputo sometimes intentionally become pregnant and then terminate pregnancies. This study explores how pregnancy and abortion function as strategic reproductive practices influenced by local norms about fertility, womanhood, and social recognition. In settings where motherhood is key to adult women’s status and infertility is heavily stigmatised, confirming the ability to conceive is socially important even before childbirth is deemed appropriate. Pregnancy thus acts as proof of reproductive capacity, while abortion allows young women to delay motherhood until their educational, economic, and social and relational conditions improve.

The presentation argues that confirmed fertility is a social value young women bring to future relationships and marriage, and to claims of womanhood. Thus, by emphasising local understandings of reproduction, the presentation contributes to debates on reproductive politics in Africa, challenging frameworks that view adolescent pregnancy and abortion primarily as risks, unintended pregnancy, and contraceptive failure.

Biographical note

Sandra Manuel is a Mozambican anthropologist, SOAS PhD graduate, and Assistant Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, health, and urban studies in Africa, challenging normative understandings of body and identity through intersectional approaches. She is Head of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at UEM and co-editor of Feminist Africa. In 2025, The Africa Report named her among the top 10 African academic figures to follow for her influential work.