The Effect Of Gender Roles Of Male Physicians And Female Midwives

     Before I watched 'A Midwife's Tale', a movie created from the diary found by Laurel Ulrich chronicling the life of a woman named Martha Ballard, I thought the women in these times were just housewives and nothing else. I pictured them doing the cleaning and the cooking for their husbands and not being very smart because of the lack of education or them being unable to work. My view on the subject changed however when I watched this specific woman's life and her work.

Firstly, Ulrich tells a story of the role of a midwife in the eighteenth century America by explaining the types of medicines used, the frequent diseases, and the medical accomplishments of practitioners. Primarily, Ulrich makes it known that to care for the health and well-being of others was a woman’s obligation during this time. “It would be a serious misunderstanding to see Martha Ballard as a singular character, an unusual woman who somehow transcended the domestic sphere to become an acknowledged specialist” (62). Rather, Ulrich insists that Martha Ballard was a classic example of the majority of women in the early American Republic. Martha was a midwife, but also a wife and mother, which meant she had her “womanly” duties to pay attention to as

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich provides a glimpse of America post Revolutionary war through her critically acclaimed book, A Midwife’s Tale, which is the interpretation of Martha Ballard’s seemingly humble diary—a record of her life as a midwife, mother, wife, and caregiver from 1785 through 1812. The book features Ballard’s account of her average day’s activities, which, in turn, serves to represent the tasks of women in her society; however, Ulrich cross-references the diary with documents such as court transcripts, land records, maps, and other diaries in order to piece together a more detailed account than one gathered solely from Ballard’s words. While popular belief envisions women in this timeframe as being constrained to the home and a litter of children, it is Ballard’s diary that reveals that women played a major role in other aspects of society, including the market economy, medicine and childbirth, versus just being mothers and homemakers.

Mary Fissell’s book Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England can be classified as a medical journal of women’s bodies and how people viewed women’s bodies, in Medieval Europe. Using midwife manuals, and other books dedicated to pregnancy and the birthing process, Fissell takes the reader back in time, to show what women in the medieval ages, had to go through. The most important aspects that Fissell talks about are during the 15th and 16th centuries, when women were beginning to “come into their own” so to speak, and speak out for themselves, while still under the stereotypes that men had of them.

Even those who were not from a middle class upbringing were expected to uphold their societal ideals. Kealy’s essay highlights how the nurse-midwife was expected to take on the mantle of the communities matron. On top of her regular duties she was expected to organize community gatherings, entertain community visitors, and train others (Kealy, 2010). This is exemplified in the statement, “she engaged in a complex round of subsistence activities and medical work plus ran a business, raised a family, trained domestics, and entertained a constant stream of visitors and travellers” (Kealy, 2010, p.99). While Domm’s essay also discusses this, Coome was a nun and as such had expectations put on her not completely from her role as a nurse-midwife but also that as a nun (Domm, 2010).

The film recorded the living habits and living conditions during their pregnancies of her patients: Ida Fenny and May Bell. The film stressed two important messages. The first was that midwives needed to maintain a sterile environment during pregnancy. That included the dressings, the

Martha gets the honor of showing the world that women of her time did all they could to be as independent as possible. In The Midwife’s Tale, Laurel Ulrich explains, “She gardened, sewed, cared for her grandchildren, nursed the sick, laid out the dead, and delivered babies” (276). She was a woman of many talents. Martha lived by a value that she expects the same respect in return and undertakes full authority over the responsibilities she considers to be her own.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was boring in Sugar City, Idaho in 1938. Laurel always had a passion for the history of women in early America. She has been know for her amount of research and how she brought light to the lives of women in early America who were mostly ignored in the history or man. One of the most famous works by Laurel is A Midwife’s Tale, which changed how people viewed the day-to-day life of woman back in the day. Each chapter of A Midwife’s Tale focuses on a different aspect of Martha Ballard’s impact on what is around her. Some of these individual aspects like, their role as midwifes and how they handle medicine, motherhood duties, their work, and how they played a key role in the economy.

Throughout our modern and ancient history the lives of women have been overlooked by male historians. In some cases, not just the lives of ordinary women, but some of the most powerful and influential women at the time. Examples of this included Nancy Wake, Mary Bowser, Sybil Ludington, and Claudette Colvin. And in many instances, important facts about our history have been erased by historians simply choosing not to record the lives of women- especially women in their everyday lives. In many communities, women were the ones who kept the household, the stores, and even life up and running. Women worked in their own homes, gardens, the fields, stores, healthcare, and in religious ceremonies. Without them, society would have fallen- women kept the world turning. Yet we know so little about the lives of everyday women. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, famed early American and women’s historian, decoded the diary of Martha Ballard in her book The Midwife’s Tale, to bring us understanding and insight into the lives of many women in the 18th century. Ulrich is a devout believer in studying the lives of ordinary women to understand history.

Midwifery has been practiced in several communities of the world since time immemorial. A midwife is a trained person, mostly a woman, who assists in the pregnancy, delivery and post-partum care of an infant. In most countries of the world, the act of midwifery has been neglected for more modern and westernized medical practices deemed safer. In the First nations community, midwives have always been an integral part of the health system assisting expecting women during delivery. In the mid nineteenth and twentieth century, midwifery was outlawed in many communities and reserves ‘for the sake of the health of the country’ (Parkland Memorial Hospital School of Nurse Midwifery). With the outlaw of midwifery in First nation reserves, expectant mothers were transported to hospitals and clinics in urban centers for delivery. With this came several new challenges for expectant first nations women and mothers including, ‘increased maternal newborn complications, increased postpartum depression and decreased breast-feeding rates’ (O’Neil et al., 1990, Smith, 2002 and Klein et al., 2002a. The relegation of first nations midwifery has done more harm than good because it makes the birth process more medical, has led to the inflict of new post natal diseases and has led to the neglect of the traditional and spiritual roles in child

51 percent of the United States is female but only 34.4 percent of doctors are women. While 90.4 percent of nurses are female (“Women in Medicine”; “Male Nurses Becoming”), the women who do become doctors earn an astounding 25 percent less than their male counterparts (Groves). These staggering figures are only a single piece in the larger overall lack of women in STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which has remained prevalent since the beginning of these fields. Although women are underrepresented in these STEM fields, this is not due to ineptitude, but instead it is a result of the force of societal stereotypes coupled with their wider range of abilities. The recent increase in women’s association with STEM seems

“My life as a midwife is about being an ordinary woman who witnesses everyday miracles.” (Sommers) Martha Ballard in A Midwife’s Tale, comparatively presented herself as the first famous midwife. However, Martha showed herself as a major figure in a male-dominated society. Although she was married to Ephraim Ballard, that didn't stop her from doing what she loved. She was a free woman in a male-dominated society, doing as she pleased to put food on the table.

Motherhood was an expected part of the wife’s life. Woman would have a large number of babies right after each other although some babies would not survive. “High mortality rates must have overshadowed the experience of motherhood in ways difficult to

Like many other careers in science and medicine, the field is mostly dominated by males. However, according to the UCAS, in 2011 55% of people accepted into a medical course in the UK were women making medical school evenly split between male and female students. Only 14% of female students decide pursue surgical specialties in contrast to the 33% of males. As a result, being a female surgeon drastically changes their experience as one.

This paper will focus on the differences and conflicts between doctors and midwifes. Doctors have been been the lead care providers for women for hundreds of years. Just short of one-hundred years ago Mary Breckinridge became the first midwife in the united states. Today there doctors and midwives have an ongoing feud. Many doctors feel as if midwives are uneducated and are not trained enough to provide health care to women, and do not agree with their more natural approach to child birth. However there conflict is slowly but surly being resolved, as many health care facilities are allowing midwives to have more authority in the work place. Secondly, this paper will go over the differences between doctors and midwives, many people are uneducated