Marginal contraception and feminine representations: an experience with injectable hormone contraception in France

In France, where the pill and the IUD are used extensively, injectable hormone contraception is more of an exception. What meaning does it have in this context? This article, which draws on data from sociological and epidemiological research undertaken in the suburbs of Paris (19861990), examines the experiences of women and prescribing doctors. The medical conception of the method as a << last resort >> induces a form of marginality associated with particular representations of the feminine as regards control of fertility. The reproductive trajectories of the users interviewed are less clear-cut than the social categories defined by doctors. For these women in socially and economically underprivileged situations, injectable hormone contraception is a compromise in which the inequalities characterizing social uses of contraception and the tensions between reproductive and contraceptive necessities are revealed.