Welcome Jo Anne,
Part of my PhD examined midwifery history and the professionalisation of
midwifery in UK, and looked critically at current changes in the
organisation of midwifery in the UK with the resulting impact on midwives.
There seem to be two versions of midwifery history, occupational licensing
and regulation which have been highlighted this year as people reflect on
the 1902 Midwives Act.
View 1 (the professional view) is that occupational regulation exists to
protect the public, to maintain standards of education and practice and
promote professional codes of ethics and practice (see Cowell). This
ispartly truye but not the whole story.
View 2 (a sociological view) is that occupational licensing is crucial for
an emerging occupation to gain state support and legal jurisdiction for its
activities and exclude market competitors (see Stacey). With midwifery in
the UK at the turn of the century, there was also the aim of ugrading the
job in terms of professional and social status. This had the resulting
impact of excluding working class midwives to the benefit of the new middle
class recruits. The role of the midwives institute (now RCM) was crucial in
this 'upgrading' of midwifery (see Hannam, Hegarty).
This view of intraoccupational struggle is rather different and less well
known compared to the inter occupational struggle story between midwives and
doctors (see Donnison).
There is a lot of work in sociology on how the professional strategies of
male and female dominated occupations differed because of differential
access to public and state support, and wealth (see Witz and Davies). The
other issue is not to assume that the the interests of midwives, midwifery
and women are the same. Often they conflict and my own work looked at the
impact of this on the midwifery workforce today (Sandall).
There have also been discussions as to how the professionalisation
strategies used are gendered (see witz and davies).
This work examines the development of other occupations and makes
comparisons across occupational groups and across time and country and uses
the concept of occupational jurisdiction to examine current struggles
between occupations (see abbott).
The key reason for looking at this literature is that it gives you another
perspective for understanding and examining current policies and
professional issues such as regulation and changing workforce roles. It can
inform you as to why the status of midwifery is so different in a range of
countries from a sociological perspective (De Vries et al ).
Abbott,A. (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of
Expert Labour, London, University of Chicago Press.
Cowell,B. Wainwright,D. (1981) Behind the blue door: The history of the
Royal College of Midwives 1881-1981, London, Bailliere.
Davies,C. (1983) Professionalising strategies as time and culture bound:
American and British nursing, Circa 1893 in (ed) EC.Lageman, Nursing
History: New Perspectives, New possibilities, New York, Teachers College
Press.
Davies,C (1995) Gender and the Professional Predicament in Nursing,
Buckingham, Open University Press.
Davies,C. (1996) The sociology of professions and the profession of gender,
Sociology, 30:661-678.
De Vries,R. (1993) A cross national view of the status of midwives in (eds)
E.Riska and K.Wegar, Gender, Work and Medicine, London, Sage.
Donnison,J. (1988) Midwives and Medical Men: A History of the Struggle for
Control of Childbirth (2nd Edition), New Barnet & London, Historical
Publications Ltd.
Hannam,J. (1996) Some aspects of the history of the Royal College of
Midwives, in (eds) S.Robinson, AM.Thomson, Midwives, Research and
Childbirth, Volume 4, London, Chapman & Hall.
Heagerty,BV. (1990) Class, Gender and Professionalisation: the Struggle for
British Midwifery, 1900-36, unpublished D.Phil. Michigan State University,
lodged RCM library.
Heagerty,BV. (1997) Willing handmaidens of science? The struggle over the
new midwife in early twentieth-century England, in (eds) MJ. Kirkham, ER.
Perkins, Reflections on Midwifery, London, Bailliere Tindall.
Stacey,M. (1988) The Sociology of Health and Healing, London, Unwin Hyman.
Witz,A. (1990) Patriarchy and Professions: The Gendered Politics of
Occupational Closure, Sociology, 24:675-690.
Witz,A. (1992) Professions and Patriarchy, London, Routledge.
Sandall,J. Bourgeault,I. W.Meijer. BA. Schuecking, (2001) Deciding who
cares: winners and losers in the late twentieth century in (Eds) Raymond
DeVries, Cecilia Benoit, Edwin van Teijlingen, Sirpa Wrede, 2001,
Birth by Design: Pregnancy, maternity care and midwifery in North Americaand
Europe, New York: Routledge
Bourgeault,I. Declerq.E. Sandall,J. Schucking,B. (2001) Changing birth:
Interest groups and maternity care policy, in (EdsRaymond DeVries, Cecilia
Benoit, Edwin van Teijlingen, Sirpa Wrede, Birth by Design: Pregnancy,
maternity care and midwifery in North America and Europe, New York:
Routledge
Benoit,C. Davis-Floyd,R E. van Teijlingen, JF. Miller, Sandall,J. (2001)
Designing Midwives: A Transnational Comparison of Education and
professionalisation, in (Eds) Raymond DeVries, Cecilia Benoit, Edwin van
Teijlingen, Sirpa Wrede, 2001, Birth by Design: Pregnancy, maternity care
and midwifery in North America and Europe, New York: Routledge
Wrede,S. Benoit,J. Sandall,J. (2001) The state and birth/the state of birth:
Maternal health policy in three countries, in (Eds) Raymond DeVries, Cecilia
Benoit, Edwin van Teijlingen, Sirpa Wrede, Birth by Design: Pregnancy,
maternity care and midwifery in North America and Europe, New York:
Routledge
Sandall,J. (2000) Choice, Continuity and Control: Changing Midwifery,
towards a sociological perspective, reprinted in (Eds) E.Van Teijlingen,
G.Lowis, P.McCaffery, M.Porter, Midwifery and the Medicalization of
Childbirth: Comparative Perspectives, Nova Science Publishers, New York.
Sandall,J. (1996) Continuity of midwifery care in Britain: A new
professional project, Gender, Work and Organisation, 3, 4:215-226.
Sandall,J. (1995) Choice, Continuity and Control: Changing Midwifery,
towards a sociological perspective, Midwifery, 11:201-209.
Hope this is helpful and good luck.
Jane Sandall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jo Anne P. Davis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 4:27 AM
Subject: New participant ~ introduction
> My name is Jo Anne Davis.
> Though I live in Cincinnati, Ohio (USA), I am a 3rd year doctoral student
in
> Nursing Science at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, USA). I have
been
> a practicing midwife for 25 years (on December 7!), and have graduate and
> undergraduate teaching experience. I am (recently) the Section Chair of
the
> ACNM Division of Research Committee on Promotion and Dissemination of
> Research (a very long title for what I do!).
> As for my research interests...
> I am very interested in exploring the beliefs and concepts that make
> midwifery unique, with the goal of linking these beliefs with our
processes
> of care and, ultimately, outcomes. It is abstract work at this point; I
am
> working on a conceptual model of what belief in normalcy means when
midwives
> use the term, and hope to understand how this belief drives management.
At
> this point my focus is on practicing, expert midwives, and in the future
it
> will be intriguing to see how midwives' beliefs and childbearing women's
> beliefs about the childbearing process overlap or diverge.
> I have become completely fascinated with how the concept of the
> nurse-midwife evolved, especially the rhetoric and politics that
culminated
> in the Midwives' Act of 1902 in Great Britain, and its implications for
> American midwifery. It is very like me to go 'way back through history to
> find out why something is the way it is. So, history is a very important
> part of my work to date, and my cognate (minor) area is heavily loaded
with
> history and sociology work.
> This is new theoretical territory and feels almost too wide open for a
> beginning researcher, but I am quite passionate about understanding and
> describing midwives' unique approach to women's health care. I am
> consulting not only my sense of what midwifery is and structuring it with
> the tools and frameworks of research, but also the rich experience that
> midwives share and our willingness to see meaning in each encounter with
the
> women we care for.
> I would welcome any curiosity, suggestions, even challenges to what I am
> working on, so please just jump right in!
>
> Jo Anne Davis, MSN, CNM
> Doctoral Student in Nursing Science
> Vanderbilt University
>
> Alternate email: [log in to unmask]
>
> --
> ---
> Jo Anne P. Davis <[log in to unmask]>
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