Description
“Are you a midwife though?!”- an exclusionary and alienating question that we have all been asked, frequently. Leading this workshop are midwives born and educated in Uganda, Iran and India, in courses that do not align with global midwifery standards. We are also members of marginalized communities, educated in line with the global standards of midwifery in Netherlands, UK, America and Iceland. Our positionality, at the intersections of citizenship, race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, language, migration, sexual preference, gender, age and location, makes our voices unique. We often don’t match the definition of a midwife because of the type, years, place or mode of education in our parts of the world or our way of thinking, lived experiences or because our chosen career pathway swayed from the traditional way of clinical midwifery practice, based on our country, culture, context and circumstances. This workshop is an effort to explore inclusion of these midwifery misfits through potential evolution of the definition of midwives and midwifery.Midwifery, while being the oldest, the most essential of professions, is plagued with many issues, often political, that need to be stated, acknowledged, accepted, understood and addressed. Discussing them just after ICM has celebrated its 100th anniversary is a perfect opportunity to open the platform for such discourses to begin, while looking forward to the next 100 years of midwifery in the world. At the midwifery misfits workshop we plan to state some of these issues while opening the platform to every participant through the ‘Midwifery Misfits Box’ for a global survey, to share what they haven’t been able to say so far, with an aim to create new discourses and find solidarity. Some of these will be randomly selected and shared during the workshop, anonymously, while they will all be collated and brought out through an article or report after the congress.
Agenda
3 minutes Welcome - Who are Midwifery Misfits?
2 minutes Introduction to the speakers - Who are we and what makes us misfits in midwifery?
20 minutes Experience sharing
5 minutes Midwifery Misfits survey and midwifery misfits box
20 minutes Audience interactions
5 minutes Next steps for the ‘Midwifery Misfits’ initiative
5 minutes Spotlight on a Seasoned midwifery misfit
| Period | 24 Jun 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | International Confederation of Midwives 33rd triennial conference: Together again: from evidence to reality |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | IndonesiaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |