MY BODY, WHOSE RULES ARE? TRADITIONAL MIDDENDERS AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF BIRTH INBRAZIL: A ISSUE OF GENDER AND EDUCATION

Abstract

The profession of midwifery is one of the oldest functions and records of which are found in almost all cultures. For centuries, childbirth was considered a private care of the female gender, performed by midwives, the woman was the protagonist. With the advent of medicine, childbirth care followed a productivist logic, intervening in the female body, sometimes violently. Medical knowledge has become a masculine place and its language reproduces and corroborates gender asymmetries and inequalities. The woman is no longer an active, conscious subject, capable of gestating and giving birth according to her desires, but an object subject to medical scrutiny and formal institutions of care. The present study brings a theoretical discussion about the importance of the knowledge of traditional midwives as necessary to the rescue of female protagonism at the time of parturition. It is a qualitative, exploratory bibliographic study. The data showed that the way in which childbirth care has progressed to the present is still far from idealized, it is very violent, inhuman. The rescue of female protagonism is one of the essential factors for the reconstruction of a different obstetric model, based on the principles of humanization and that depends on all those who participate in this unique moment