Abstract

Contemporary health care in childbirth, mostly medicinal and hospital care, can be seen as an example of the hegemonic patriarchy and the medicalisation of  women's body and health. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, childbirth - that was part of the female field of caring,  where gender was imposed as a condition for access - was transferred to the medical jurisdiction, mostly male. The midwives with an eminently practical knowledge,  lost legitimacy. The main criticism of medicalisation emerged with greater expression in the last half of the twentieth century, denouncing the loss of power and role of women in maternity and exploring alternatives.

The seminar intends to deepen the debate, based on research, in progress, on the knowledges and powers in home birth in Portugal. One can say that  it seems that at home not only gender, but especially relationships based on trust determine access to the inner space of childbirth; On the other hand,  a valorisation of the role of women and their self-determination emerges, and a recovery of the ideal of sisterhood mediated by emerging actors such as doulas. Some of these dynamics can be interpreted as reflecting an essentialist view of women, referring it to the indispensability of the performance of their reproductive biological functions, but it seems to be relevant to analyse them as an example of the rejection of male expertise references. Paradoxically, the most prominent national and international experts in the humanisation of childbirth are men. These male-female interactions, which involve and shape the dynamics of medicalisation and de-medicalisation of childbirth, configure the discrete mechanisms of domination and emancipation we propose to debate.

Suggested readings

Shabot, Sara Cohen (2015), “Making Loud Bodies “Feminine”: A Feminist Phenomenological Analysis of Obstetric Violence”, Springer, 1-17.

Santos, Mário (s.d.), “O retorno do feminino no parto domiciliar contemporâneo”. Unpublished Material.

[To access the articles up for discussion send an email to gw@ces.uc.pt]

Bio note

Mário J D S Santos holds a degree in Nursing and an MA in Health, Medicine and Society. Currently, he is an FCT grant holder/Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at  CIES-IUL, with the project «Saberes, poderes e (novas) dinâmicas profissionais em torno do parto em casa» (SFRH/BD/99993/2014).