Women's place: an exploration of current discourses of childbirth

Abstract

This thesis explores the construction of the medical and natural childbirth discourses of childbirth through current texts generated from women's stories. The methodological approach and analysis of texts incorporates the principles of feminism and the postmodern approach of Foucault. By setting the current texts in their historical and social contexts, the discursive construction and positioning of women and midwives within childbirth is illuminated. Aspects of power application, discursive transformation and subjectivity are used to illustrate how discourses function to both restrict and sanction what is to be known. Hospitalisation and surveillance are suggested as techniques of power application that continue to support the medical discourse. Ways in which the natural childbirth discourse has been relegated to the status of 'other' are examined and the positioning of midwives within the discourses before and after the 1990 Nurses Amendment Act, is identified. The feminist postmodern lens provides a different way of viewing the construction of childbirth and I have concluded that this view fulfils a feminist political imperative by identifying spaces for resistance.