Body colonization and women's despersonification in the obstetric system

Abstract

The present work aims to build an intelligibility about the subjection of women to the medical-hospital authority during pregnancy and childbirth. The current obstetric system in Brazil, studied from a qualitative approach, involving narratives of twenty-four women who tell stories about how they felt disembodied at the time of childbirth, shows that this has been constituted in a colonized and violent way. In the relationship of these women with the obstetric system, every form of objectification of the body, obstetric violence and non-attendance to the woman's wishes as the protagonist of childbirth prevails. Professional tutelage prevails in detriment of the performance of knowledge of the body, the sensitive, the common. The alternative to excessive medical/hospital authority in the traditional process has been the search for humanized teams, dismantling the hegemonic procedure from the desire to live childbirth as an experience of protagonism