Western Ways Of Birthing Affect Women

Since the 19th Century, women in Canada have fought political, legal, and social battles to find their place in Canadian society. From starting out in small, local organizations, to legal battles in the Supreme Court, Canadian women have come a long way. Unfortunately, it took a long time for many people to adapt to the changing roles of women, which made women still feel unequal compared to men. It is really striking to think that at one point society questioned if women could even be considered persons, just a small sample of the many changes women had to face through the course of history. This paper will analyze these changes experienced by Canadian women in that time period and how it affected their everyday lives.

Barker, J. (2008). Gender, Sovereignty, Rights: Native Women's Activism against Social Inequality and Violence in Canada. American Quarterly, 60(2), 8. Retrieved fro m http://search.Proquest.com.Ez proxy.library.yorku.ca/docview/61688929?Acc ountid=15182.

Chapter 4, “Better Dead than Pregnant:” The Colonization of Native Womens’ Reproductive Health, discusses women's bodies being utilized as an experimental ground for reproduction and medical testing. Smith argues that racism plays a key role in the common anxieties about a rise in the global population. Even though population control organizations may claim to want to reduce the size of every ethnic and racial group, in the end, they often work to reduce populations of color. This reality leads to Smith’s argument of reproductive rights, which she views as a thinly veiled effort to destroy and control Native American communities. An illustration of this direct violation of women's reproductive rights was when the "Indian Health

I think it would be an understatement to say that there are many differences between the American and Hmong birthing process's. Chapter one describes in explicit detail the common process of how a baby is born into the Hmong culture. Specifically following the life of a woman named Foua. Myself being more familiar with the American way of childbirth, I found this woman's story fascinating. The process's and beliefs that the Hmong have toward childbirth are vastly different than American's. The Hmong seem to be more superstitious about the whole thing, and don't believe in modern medicine. While on the American side, we use every medical precaution, to the point that every minute of the babies development and birth is planned to a tee.

Jones (2012) explains that if the baby died during birth or pregnancy the baby was not considered a being, and if the baby survived, Indigenous men would hold ceremonies to establish the baby as a ‘being’. When the baby was birthed the umbilical cord would be severed by a sharp stone and the placenta would be buried. The Policy of Assimilation (1961) noted that more research into Aboriginal health was needed and Aboriginals’ required education in regards to pre-natal and post-natal care. The ministers felt that bush birthing was not hygienic and risky to health of mother and baby. Jones (2012) Ascertains that almost every aspect of Indigenous Australians lives was controlled by the state, and because of this some Aboriginal women would attempt to stay away from the authorities, and give birth in the bush quietly so as the baby would not be seized and removed. With the authorities upholding the power over Indigenous populations, this destroyed the traditional rituals that surrounded childbirth, the state government authorities saw themselves with the best of intentions, but did not take into account the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing and the traditions of the Indigenous

What roles do Indigenous women play within the family? Do these roles change with further contact with Europeans? What strategies are used by these women to attempt to maintain their independence and power?

Throughout this course, we learn that women’s studies originated as a concerned at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). It has always been known that in the past, men have had more privilege than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs have divergent female identities, however this does not hinder the fact that many of these cultures are based on patriarchal past where men hold more rights than women. Canadian women have sought to overcome these stereotypes and have managed to gain a position of near equality. This was

The Scythe and the Scalpel: Dissecting the Sterilizations of Native American Women in the 1970's

She argues that women face many institutional and societal barriers. In this regard, I will give examples of the institutional and structural barriers such as “The Indian Act” which have significantly affected Indigenous women in Canada in many ways including social, economic and political. While comparing feminists and Indigenous feminists, I think that Native women are different in several ways including social, cultural, historical, political and economic; therefore, Indigenous feminism is a way of practicing the values that they have been taught and inherited from their

For hundred of years, women have wrestled with their womanhood, bodies, and what it means to be a woman in our society. Being a woman comes with a wonderful and empowering responsibility--giving birth. What sets us aside from other countries is that the process and expectations of giving birth has changed in our society; coming from midwifery, as it has always been since the early times, to hospitals where it is now expected to give birth at. Midwifery was a common practice in delivering babies in

When European settlers arrived, they had a pre-decided vision of what women ought to behave like based on the European women, which the indigenous women didn’t align with. Indigenous women were comprehended and characterized in ambiguous and conflicting terms. They could firstly be viewed as “noble savages” where they were seen as classic Indian Princesses, virginal, childlike, naturally pure, beautiful, helpful to European men, and open and willing to

Does everybody think or feels the same about childbirth around the world? This question above is a question that has always been in my mind. Now that I got the opportunity of choosing a topic to do research. I decided to choose childbirth and culture. This research paper is going to talk about how different cultures and countries look a birth in an entirely different manner. Some look at birth as a battle and others as a struggle. And on some occasions, the pregnant mother could be known as unclean or in other places where the placenta is belief to be a guardian angel. These beliefs could be strange for us but for the culture in which this is being practiced is natural and a tradition. I am going to be introducing natural and c-section childbirth. And, the place of childbirth is going to be a topic in this essay. America is one country included in this research paper.

In April 1995 Pamela George, an Ojibway women, was brutally murdered in Saskatchewan. Her murderers Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, young middle-class white men, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to merely six and a half years in prison. George’s story is one of the many Indigenous women who have been murdered or missing over the past years. There are over 580 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, close to half are put aside and left unsolved. Only 53% of these cases have lead to charges of homicide (Klement 8). Drastically, statistics indicate that Aboriginals are faced with more hardships throughout their life compared to the average Canadian. Indigenous groups, particularly women, suffer from a lower rate of education, higher suicide rates and an array of health risks. This paper will examine the role settler colonization history has played in perpetuating conditions for violence to indigenous women, many of which are still experienced today. This will be accomplished by first assessing the history of settler colonization and its negative repercussions. Secondly, it will use Sherene Razak’s concept of “spatial segregation,” to illustrate how state institutions have facilitated violence through space, race and the law. Lastly, this paper will use evidence from the film “Finding Dawn” to further demonstrate how violence towards indigenous women is institutionally produced.

As Canada’s baby boom generation begins to turn 65, attention is now focusing on the demographic trend that anthropologists have been discussing for years. Canada like many countries is aging. Life expectancy has been rising for decades. In 2006, people could expect to live to 81 compared to just 25 years earlier when the average life expectancy was only 76. Canada's birthrate exploded between the end of WWII until about 1965, this increased birthrate was due to an improving economy which lead to an increase in larger families. Canadian women born between 1911 and 1912 had an average of 2.9 children, whereas those born between 1929 and 1933 had an average of 3.3. These two generations separated by 20 years shows a 13% increase in the number

From the beginning of recorded history, there has been a variety of traditions to help enter the baby into the family. Some traditions have a negative effect, while some have a positive effect. Some countries have important traditions, that have a major effect on the people, and some countries do not have very important ones. China, in this case, has a tradition that has been followed for plenty of years. This tradition is that the husband takes the pregnant wife, and walks on coals before the pregnancy. People say that the act of this tradition was being done because of confidence for the women’s pregnancy.The `myth of this tradition is that if the husband walks the wife over the coals, the pregnancy will be successful. The practice of carrying a pregnant woman over coals in China has a negative impact on the community because it leads to pain and suffering, causes financial losses for medical services, and it results in negative limitations for the wife during her pregnancy.