WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #342 - Antipatriarchy, VSS: facing violence, from maternity to postpartum (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Every year, on the occasion of November 20 (Trans Day of Remembrance)

and November 25 (world day for the elimination of violence against
women), we try on the one hand to draw up a portrait of gender-based and
sexual violence (SGBV) with a libertarian feminist analysis, and on the
other hand, to propose political avenues to abolish them. This year,
focus on the link between gender-based violence and parenting. ----
Every year, on the occasion of November 20 (Trans Day of Remembrance)
and November 25 (world day for the elimination of violence against
women), we try on the one hand to portray sexist and sexual violence
(SGBV) with a libertarian feminist analysis, and on the other hand,
propose political avenues to abolish them. This year, focus on the link
between gender-based violence and parenting.

Far from an essentialist analysis which would suggest that women are
victims of violence due to their biology, this article seeks to dissect
the way in which our society constructs the vulnerability of women
during the period of pregnancy, and during the first years of children,
whose care is mainly attached to women. It is their social and economic
vulnerability which leads to an increase in violence during this period.

To analyze this subject, we will approach it from three angles:
dependence on the medical profession and obstetric violence; dependence
on the couple and the increase in domestic violence during pregnancy;
and finally, more generally, the social organization of the reception of
children in life as structural violence against women. This article
focuses on cis hetero contexts and deserves an extension to talk about
situations outside this context such as violence suffered by pregnant
trans men.

Obstetric violence
If gynecological violence occurs throughout the life of women, whose
bodies are socially more controlled than those of men by the medical
profession[1], this control, and therefore the potential for violence,
is notably increased in time of pregnancy and childbirth. Feminist
analyzes have now shown how women's health, and in particular support
and care during pregnancy and childbirth, historically in the hands of
(mid)wives, has gradually been monopolized by a male medical
profession[2]. And even if the evolution of medical means has allowed a
drastic reduction in mortality at the time of childbirth, many people
today denounce the harmful effects of the overmedicalization of childbirth.

Above all designed to meet the needs of doctors, childbirth protocols
cause physical and psychological after-effects for women. Episiotomies,
induction of labor, use of forceps, lying down position... all these
actions are not always necessary, and above all, they are very often
carried out without consent or explanations to the parturients. Added to
this is a layer of racism, which makes black women even more numerous
victims of obstetric violence.

The media coverage of several situations of violence and the
mobilization of women may have enabled some developments such as the
emergence of a vast public debate on medical practices during
childbirth, or the publication of an opinion from the National
Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) which issued an opinion on the need
to obtain explicit consent from patients, without fundamentally calling
into question medical power and its influence over women's bodies.

Couple dependence and domestic violence
Between 2 and 6% of women experience physical violence from their
partner during their pregnancy[3]. And, according to the few studies
available, for 40% of women victims of physical domestic violence, the
abuse began while they were pregnant. As for other forms of domestic
violence, no study allows us to provide figures. While for some women,
pregnancy can be a period of calm in violence, it can also very often be
either a trigger or an aggravating factor. Thus, for two thirds of women
experiencing violence before their pregnancy, the violence worsened
after their delivery with four times as many women reporting very bad
treatment compared to domestic violence in general[4].

How to analyze these elements? Two joint phenomena take place during
this period. First of all, the moment of pregnancy, the vast majority of
which is taken care of, both physically and in terms of organization and
preparation, by women. Added to this is the arrival of the child which
breaks the couple's exclusive relationship. These two elements can be a
source of development of a greater form of autonomy for women, through
the development of a form of expertise. This potential source of
emancipation is opposed by an increase in violence to guarantee control.

Furthermore, leaving your home and your relationship is harder with a
child than without. Beyond the social injunctions to maintain the
parental couple for the well-being of the children, the need for
financial and material resources is in fact more important, even though
women are economically weakened after the arrival of the first child,
and even more so for the following[5]. More vulnerable, physically and
economically, which therefore offers more opportunities for men to carry
out violence.

Finally, we must mention the recurring strategy of violent fathers and
masculinist groups, of using children to maintain contact and exert
their control over the mother.

Finally, while maternity could be a key moment for identifying domestic
violence and supporting female victims, this period is under-exploited
by public prevention policies and by doctors.

Postpartum social organization
The reality for women after giving birth, when their partner returns to
work after three weeks of leave (25 days of paternity leave, since
2019), is not glorious:

physical and psychological consequences of childbirth
social isolation: absence of paternity leave worthy of the name, lack of
nearby parent-child reception areas, welcoming socialization spaces for
young children (activist places included), unsuitable public transport,
disappearance of family friends the entourage of young parents, lack of
friendly solidarity networks, and refocusing on the family space, often
the other women in the family (mother, sister). This can lead to a
staggering number of women not interacting with adults other than their
partner for months.
inequality within the couple and assignment to poorly valued tasks.
Thus, according to INSEE, in 2010, women performed 72% of household
tasks and 65% of parental tasks, and the arrival of a child is often a
period of worsening inequalities in the distribution of household tasks.
injunction to happy motherhood, lack of support for parenthood,
contradictory social injunctions...
While the "baby blues" are mainly presented as the consequence of a
hormonal drop, or the indicator of a previous unhappiness, we can affirm
that it is also the consequence of a patriarchal organization of
society, which comes placing almost all of this exhausting work, tinged
with social contempt, and degraded symbolically and economically, on women.

The consequences of this social organization are dramatic. It is
estimated that 80% of new mothers suffer from baby blues and 15 to 20%
suffer from postpartum depression. Furthermore, suicide is the leading
cause of death for women in the year following the birth of a child
(risk seventy times higher than at any other time in a woman's life[6]).

Faced with this staggering observation, it becomes urgent to rethink the
organization of postpartum, if only at our level, by making our spaces
accessible to mothers, and by recreating friendly and militant
solidarity around young parents. .

Parenthood, an integral part of feminism
While feminists have long hesitated to take an interest in pregnancy and
motherhood as a political issue[7] , it seems to us on the contrary that
the struggles for the self-determination of women, and in particular
concerning sexual and reproductive life, must integrate all the
questions surrounding parenthood. And even if pregnancy and childbirth
are often the Trojan horse of essentialist feminists, it is necessary
not to abandon this field of struggle.

Even today, the social practices of giving birth to children and their
support increase the vulnerability of women, and therefore their
exposure to violence. The field of feminist demands which has opened up
since the 2010s, with the appearance of viral hashtags and parent
collectives, must be explored further. Obstetric violence,
overmedicalization of childbirth, distribution of parental and domestic
tasks, parental leave, public early childhood service, assisted
reproduction for all... so many subjects that deserve the full attention
of feminist movements.

This fight for self-determination, against the obsession with body
control and the assignment to the maternal role and for the collective
emancipation of women, must go through a radical change in the social
organization of parenthood, in connection with the LGBTI movements,
which shake up, and for our greater good, the shackles of heterosexuality.

Albe (UCL Savoies) and Antonin (UCL Marseille)

To validate

[1]Elsa Dorlin, The Matrix of Race. Sexual and colonial genealogy of the
French nation, La Découverte, 2006.

[2]Sharmila Naudou, "Wise witches, the profession of knowing and giving
birth" to read on Cairn.info.

[3]"In France, 2 women out of 100 experience violence during their
pregnancy", Inserm.fr.

[4]Muriel Salmona, "Pregnancy and domestic violence: impact on the
child", L'Observatoire, December 2008, to read on Memoiretraumatic.org.

[5]"The contribution of women is 39% in childless couples, compared to
respectively 38% and 36% when there are one or two children, and finally
27% when there are three or more children" in "Eparts de income within
couples", March 2014, Insee.fr..

[6]CNGOF press release, March 5, 2019, ""Blues" or depression after
childbirth, consequences too often neglected".

[7]Béatrice Cascales, Laëtitia Négrié, "Childbirth, a divisive issue for
feminist movements?», Béatrice Cascales, Laëtitia Négrié, to read on
Cairn.info.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?VSS-faire-face-aux-violences-de-la-maternite-au-post-partum
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