MOTHERHOOD AND OBSTETRIC VIOLENCE IN ITALY: WOMEN’S BODIES AS A FIELD OF STRUGGLE

The thesis addresses the subjects of motherhood and obstetric violence in Italy, with respect to the modes and constructs that characterize the experience of pregnancy and childbirth and of women’s mothering as persistent elements of the sexual division of labour. The need to deepen and challenge these features concerning childbirth and motherhood is the outcome of an impaired perception related to how these phenomena are required to be performed, due to social expectations, as well as institutional forms of discipline and hegemony over female bodies, enshrined in laws and policies too. Aware of the available evidence, according to which one third of women experiences trauma whilst giving birth, it seems undeniable the urgency to tackle the widespread concept of “obstetric violence” and its correlation with the social construction of motherhood, whose interdependence results in the conceiving of women’s bodies as a field of struggle. The major research issues aim to examine: the origin of the actual modes and constructs concerning childbirth and motherhood; the most widespread stereotypes related to motherhood, the role of the mother, and the moment of pregnancy and childbirth; the way in which the latter allow for the perpetration of obstetric violence, especially in the Italian context; the possibility of considering obstetric violence as a form of gender-based violence, perpetrated by the female health workforce too; the existence of an awareness about this phenomenon in women who suffered it. To answer these questions, the study is carried out with different and integrated approaches. The starting point is a feminist and human rights-based perspective, evaluating the impact of laws and policies, but also of social changes, in terms of their consequences and their ability to produce effective responses through a gender lens, considering the promotion and protection of women’s human rights with an intersectional standpoint. The dissertation is structured according to a historical perspective, with the aim of retracing the origins of the debate and the current state of the art, making it possible to conclude a context-situated reasoning related to the present; with a second additional level of analysis, which is geographical, allowing a shift from the international level to the Italian national context, constituting the central case study and the ultimate protagonist of the investigation. The stacking of motherhood and obstetric violence as grounds of reasoning in this analysis embodies the effort to deepen, deconstruct, and provide an alternative to harmful and constraining modes and constructs related to these phenomena, hoping to trigger a constructive debate as a starting point for a multidimensional effective response at different levels, in academic, social, and political terms.