Estratificació obstètrica interseccional.

Abstract

Obstetric violence consists of a set of practices and situations that put women in a defenseless condition. They are emotionally and/or bodily crushed in a non-consensual situation that produces physical and psychological consequences of different degrees of intensity. We can affirm that obstetric violence occurs when the basic ethical and human competencies of the professionals are non-existent and these competencies reveal a hierarchical, patriarchal, and colonial structure characteristic of the biomedical system, generating or amplifying psychological injuries in women. This article explores part of data obtained both in the study carried out with migrant women from Pakistan, Morocco, China, and Senegal as well as from, another research carried out with birth professionals, gynecology-obstetrics and midwifery, in Barcelona. To introduce these studies, some reflections will be used concerning the concept of denialism and the need/willingness to redefine obstetric violence. Likewise, intersectionality and decolonial thinking will be used as a conceptual framework to illustrate the results of the studies. The objective is to explore the process of historical-cultural construction of inequality, segregation, and violence that concerns the surveillance of the bodies and corporalities of women vulnerable by the system in the field of sexual and reproductive health that I define as intersectional obstetric stratification. This proposal is made to broaden the concept of obstetric racism and highlight the existing discriminations in the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and upbringing suffered by these groups of women. In addition, the elaboration of the concept of intersectional obstetric stratification has the purpose of breaking with the universalism, essentialism, neutrality, and androcentrism of the biomedical system that sees its maximum expression in migrant women.

KEY WORDS: Intersectional obstetric stratification, obstetric racism, migrant women.