Finding Azadi: South Asian Canadian Women’s Experiences of Sexual Well-Being
Abstract
Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with cisgender women, age 20-40, and their shared experiences were compiled into two narrative composites. This study is informed by an intersectional-life course framework, exploring sexuality as a site of shifting power relations at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of participants' lives. This study identifies five predominant sexual constructions that South Asian Canadian women understand and experience over time. It also identifies five predominant strategies used by women to maintain a personally meaningful sexual life (sexual well-being). Participants’ fluctuating sexual well-being involving active negotiation of the relationship to one’s body, identities (including ethnoracial and religious identities), and interpersonal relationships. It finds that women’s sexuality is a site of power used to define and maintain boundaries of the imagined nation, in both South Asian and western spaces. Women’s sexuality is often tied to ideas of risk, and women are expected to perform ideal types in order to protect the status quo within their families and communities. The study finds that women learn to resist and transform external ideals about sexuality, often by leaning into their cultures and religions to negotiate tensions while remaining connected to their South Asian realities.