What role does gender have in shaping knowledge that underpins the practice of midwifery?

ABSTRACT

Midwifery is an ancient profession that continues to be practiced almost exclusively by women. This paper explores the role that millennia of gender exclusivity has had in shaping the knowledge that informs the profession. Prior to the Renaissance this knowledge was exclusively female, largely oral, tacit and intuitive whilst recognising childbearing as an important transformative period in a woman’s lifecycle. Male scientific enquiry in the seventeenth century into human anatomy extended to women’s bodies and childbirth and disrupted the female ways of knowing. Their positivist ontology focussing on the mechanics of childbirth created an opportunity for intervening in a normal process and receiving payment for it. The perceived structural superiority of a male obstetric ontology of childbirth has posed an existential threat to the midwifery profession. This paper concludes by discussing how 20^th century professional regulation of midwifery has encouraged midwives to use patriarchal structures and frameworks of knowledge to co-exist within the hegemonic biomedical model advocated by the majority of their obstetric colleagues.

KEYWORDS:

• Midwifery
• intuition
• knowledge
• obstetrics
• expert opinion
• profession
• ontology
• epistemology

Acknowledgments

With thanks to Dr Mary Dobson and Professor Jackie Campbell for their support, critical review and comments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Pendleton

John Pendleton is a Registered Midwife, Senior Lecturer and PhD student at the University of Northampton. His research will focus on the experiences of male midwives working in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and in particular, the intersection of their marginal status, gender and professional identity.