Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10071/28988
Author(s): | Santos, M. Augusto, A. Clausen, J. A. Shabot, S. C. |
Date: | 2019 |
Title: | Essentialism as a form of resistance: An ethnography of gender dynamics in contemporary home births |
Journal title: | Journal of Gender Studies |
Volume: | 28 |
Number: | 8 |
Pages: | 960 - 972 |
Reference: | Santos, M., Augusto, A., Clausen, J. A., & Shabot, S. C. (2019). Essentialism as a form of resistance: An ethnography of gender dynamics in contemporary home births. Journal of Gender Studies, 28(8), 960-972. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2019.1650256 |
ISSN: | 0958-9236 |
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): | 10.1080/09589236.2019.1650256 |
Keywords: | Discourse Emancipation Essentialism Ethnography Homebirth Portugal |
Abstract: | Feminist scholars have criticised the essentialist construction of femininity associated with ‘natural’ childbirth movements. Along these debates, planned midwife-attended home births stand as the typical representation of this counterculture. In this article, we present data from a multi-sited ethnography on Portuguese home births where we analyse how gender ideologies are reproduced and operationalised by families and home birth professionals. Our findings illustrate how home birth care and associated practices are configuring apparently contradicting gender ideologies. Essentialist perspectives, which conceive birth as an opportunity to reconnect with women's oppressed femininity, coexist with non-binary conceptions of gender, where masculinity and femininity are regarded as fluid forms of energy that everyone has in different degrees, and where men are potentially welcomed in the birth setting, either as fathers or as professionals. Given the androcentric references of modern obstetrics and the marginal position of home birth, we argue that essentialism was constructed as a form of resistance. |
Peerreviewed: | yes |
Access type: | Open Access |
Appears in Collections: | CIES-RI - Artigos em revistas científicas internacionais com arbitragem científica |
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