What do midwives fear?

BackgroundThere is evidence that a significant number of women are fearful about birth but less is known about the fears of maternity health providers and how their fear may impact on the women they care for.AimThe aim of this study was to determine the top fears midwives in Australia and New Zealand hold when it comes to caring for childbearing women.MethodFrom 2009 to 2011, 17 workshops were held in Australia and New Zealand supporting over 700 midwives develop skills to keep birth normal. During the workshop midwives were asked to write their top fear on a piece of paper and return it to the presenters. Similar concepts were grouped together to form 8 major categories.FindingsIn total 739 fears were reported and these were death of a baby (n = 177), missing something that causes harm (n = 176), obstetric emergencies (n = 114), maternal death (n = 83), being watched (n = 68), being the cause of a negative birth experience (n = 52), dealing with the unknown (n = 36) and losing passion and confidence around normal birth (n = 32). Student midwives were more concerned about knowing what to do, while homebirth midwives were mostly concerned with being blamed if something went wrong.ConclusionThere was consistency between the 17 groups of midwives regarding top fears held. Supporting midwives with workshops such as dealing with grief and loss and managing fear could help reduce their anxiety. Obstetric emergency skills workshops may help midwives feel more confident, especially those dealing with shoulder dystocia and PPH as they were most commonly recorded.     

The Incomplete Revolution

South Africa's negotiated transition promised significant gains for gender equality, as women acquired one-third of the seats in the national parliament, secured constitutional protection, and began a process of legislative and institutional reform. Once apartheid was dismantled, the programs of racial and gender empowerment theoretically should have proceeded at the same rates, given the rhetorical commitments of the liberation parties. Life for the majority of South African women, however, continues to be marked by socio-economic hardships, patriarchal domination, and gender violence. This article asserts that the roots of women's continued inequality are found within the western reform models utilized by the anti-apartheid movement that reproduced public/private, male/female dichotomies in state institutions, thereby entrenching male discourse and power. The data suggest that in order to disrupt the power of the patriarchy women need to challenge male domination within the domestic sphere as well as challenging gender discrimination in public political spaces.     

In Laura’s House

Eaton’s images offer us an eerie dream of blistering empathy using Donna and Laura, the iconic teenage friends of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, as identificatory paths into a sexualized female psyche divided against itself by the paternal violence at the heart of an “ordinary” family. This graphic vignette is one of simultaneously poignant, radical, and therapeutic solidarity and survival, the monstrously violating figures peopling Laura Palma’s world becoming recognizable, if only for a short, privileged time, to the hitherto unspoiled eyes of her best friend Donna.     

THE DIASPORA OF WEST AFRICA: THE INFLUENCE OF WEST AFRICAN CULTURES ON “JODY CALLS” IN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY

This research addresses the influences of West African cultures on a rarely studied area: marching cadences of the United States military. This article details the evolution of these military marching cadences tracing their form back to slave songs and to the music of precolonial West Africa. Six elements are identified that link these forms of music. These are: call and response, focus on the voice, percussion backbeat to create energy, functionality in nature, focus on the experiences of daily living, and oral history. These suggest a great influence of West African music on the United States military marching cadences.     

INFO-WAR AND THE POLITICS OF FEMINIST CURIOSITY

The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001 and the subsequent declaration of the ‘war on terror’ by US and European powers, placed a particular burden upon feminists in those countries to call attention to the centrality of gender discourse in the current geo-political era. This essay recognises the urgency of exploring the ‘war on global terror’ from a feminist perspective, and applying pedagogical expertise to encourage wide-ranging, informed debate within the academic classroom. Identifying the feminist questions at the heart of contemporary discourse on freedom and civilization can become a valuable way to develop a critique of imperialism from many different locations. Two themes are pursued: the language of difference, and the implications of speaking about women and gender in different situations; and the challenges of postmodern warfare, which demand a close critique of information sources. The international enterprise to reconstruct civil society in Afghanistan offers urgent opportunities to test the feasibility of transnational feminist work, in theory and practice. Finally, the essay considers the importance of bringing different kinds of contemporary texts into the classroom. The best-selling The Bookseller of Kabul is examined as a useful subject of critique. Bringing a feminist perspective on whiteness can also be helpful in analysing representations of orientalist, racist texts. Finally, feminist analyses of militarism provide a valuable way to connect patterns of power ‘at home’ with the way that war is represented to the public.     

We have not arrived from the sea: a Mizrahi literary geography

This article examines how writers of Middle Eastern background, such as Iraqi‐born Yitzhak Bar‐Moshe, who writes in Arabic and has been translated into Hebrew, Iraqi‐born Sammy Michael, Egyptian‐born Yitzhak Gormezano and Iraqi‐born Shimon Balas, challenge the processes of adverse essentialisation and racialisation of Mizrahi Jews by the European Jewish hegemony in Israel. These writers identify themselves as portrayers of a Mizrahi self‐representation and their works were published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The paper examines how writers who represent themselves as Mizrahi — a self‐representation which has been engendered in the course of their interpositions in the domain of Israeli literature — point to possible courses of intervention in the field of Israeli literature dominated by the Ashkenazi or Eurocentric hegemony. These courses of literary intervention become possible not just because Mizrahi Jews are depicted as a third‐world group; but also because they occupy another position — a ‘third space’ or ‘in‐between’ position. While they belong to the ‘Jewish nation’, Mizrahi Jews were part of the Arab/Third world. Thus, it is their ‘in‐between’ position that locates them at a privileged site to challenge European Jewish hegemony in Israel by attempting to entrench within it an antagonistic and defiant Mizrahi presence.     

From voiceless to voicing: The communication empowerment of sex-trafficking survivors by using participatory video

This paper examined the impacts of participatory video used in digital training on the empowerment of sex-trafficking survivors in the Philippines. For survivors of online sexual exploitation involved in this study, technology played a critical role in their abuse, making it necessary to understand how technology-supported communication can also play in their recovery and personal development. Drawing upon the thematic analysis of data collected from debriefing, interviews, and participants-generated videos, the findings have shown that the participatory video as a tool to support communication, as a mirror for reflexivity and voicing, and as a mediated space to connect and gain support, affords a communicative platform for survivors to participate, to interact, and to take control of the technology. We argue that the use of Information and Communication Technology for empowerment is subject to the personalized needs, autonomy and participation of the users .