RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: No Male Midwives, and That’s the Law

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 4 1998 (IPS) - After years of discrimination against women trying to enter “male” jobs or careers, the flipside appeared in Argentina this week when a man was barred from training as a “midwife.”

It takes four years here to train as an obstetric nurse, and the course is offered in several universities. This is a paramedic qualification practiced entirely by women midwives or obstetrixes, with no male counterpart.

One hundred percent of the 1,400 people currently studying for this career are women.

Up until now only complaints from women barred from taking up a “male” job or career had made the news. For instance, one woman who studied to be a football referee was not accepted to work in first division matches by the Argentine Football Association.

But Daniel Brandy, the man who wanted to be a midwife, found out, there is a 1967 law which makes midwifery an exclusively female post, causing outcry amongst feminist groups, not only because of the gender discrimination but because this attitude veils an area peppered with prejudices: that of pregnancy and birth care.

Because just as all midwives are women, 80 percent of obstetricians -those legally authorised to care for a woman during pregnancy and birth- are men, who are increasingly supported by the work of the obstetric nurses, their subordinates.

Many of these women attend the mother-to-be through labour up until the baby’s head is born, when the doctor takes over.

“The doctors know if we are there they can come in at the last minute, and sometimes we practically deal with the delivery alone,” one midwife, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IPS.

Meanwhile, Maria Jose Lubertino, director of the Women’s Social and Political Institute, said the Brandy case “is a blatant demonstration that we live in a sexist society, where men and women have roles assigned on the basis of prejudices.”

The law which prevents Brandy from studying the career states “the exercising of obstetrics is reserved to persons of the female gender with a university qualification as obstetrix or midwife,” a rule which, according to explanations by university teachers, is based on tradition and concern for female modesty.

However, this statement was given the lie by the fact most doctors attending pregnancies are men and, according to Lubertino’s explanation to IPS, there is a cultural tendency to identify the male obstetrician as being more “trustworthy” than a woman carrying out the same role.

“Women were also educated in this same sexist society which makes us believe the male men will perform better in the birth, and that women, meanwhile, will be efficient as assistants to the doctors, putting emotional limitations on the difficult situation the woman is going through,” said Lubertino.

Similarly, director of the obstetrics department in Buenos Aires University, Mirta Rodriguez, said the World Health Organisation defines the activity of the midwife as “an ancestrally female matter.”

For anthropologist, Ana Gonzalez, the case is not discriminatory against men, but women, as historically, births have moved from the control of female birth attendants to that of male medical power.

“The career of obstetrix is socially undervalued, consecrating the subordinate role of the midwife to the power of the doctor and this appears as a prolongation of the female domestic attributes,” said Gonzalez in her article “The obstetrics profession: Gender and subordination.”

The National Institution against Discrimination and Racism and the Forum of Non Governmental Entities Fighting Discrimination warned the ban imposed on men entering the career was based on a law which violated the Constitution, and that Brandy therefore had good grounds for legal action.

Lubertino offered Brandy legal advice, saying the case showed sexist prejudices do not only affect women.

“Men are also victims of this society, which is still calling for active policies to help break these stereotypes from the State,” she added.