Laura Brito’s thesis, titled “Intersection of race, gender and class — an analysis of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum experiences of Black and Afro-descendant mothers in Lisbon,” concluded that although there is no formal discrimination in access to health services, these women’s experiences are marked by various forms of violence (gender and racial), with health professionals perpetuating stereotypes.
The doctoral research, conducted within the Social Studies Center’s “Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship” program, used a questionnaire with 119 valid responses and 17 in-depth interviews with Black women.
While the questionnaire shows that therapeutic care tends to follow the General Health Directorate’s recommendations during pregnancy and postpartum, in the case of childbirth at hospitals, care “begins to deviate from recommendations,” which may be related to a Portuguese culture of “highly instrumentalized childbirth,” Laura Brito, trained in anthropology, told Lusa news agency.
“This medicalization of childbirth is transversal to all women, classes, and races,” the researcher clarified.
Even so, in the questionnaire, although the majority stated they did not suffer obstetric violence (63.9%), 6.7% considered they had suffered obstetric violence related to their ethnic-racial identity.
It was in the in-depth interviews that Laura Brito identified the perpetuation of stereotypes.
There is an account of a woman who went to the hospital, already pregnant, with blood loss, and the attending doctor asked if she had ever been stabbed.
“Why would I have been stabbed? To this day, that confuses me immensely. That was the situation where I said, ‘No, they would never ask me this question if I were a white woman sitting here in front of him, concerned about having a problem with the baby,'” she reported.
The idea that Black women better endure pain and the consequent devaluation of symptoms are some of the issues raised in the interviews.
There is a case of a baby born without ears after 11 ultrasounds during pregnancy, without the mother being informed of her child’s condition, and another where the doctor allegedly pressured a pregnant woman to take her case to a social worker.
“Structural racism doesn’t take a break in the delivery room,” stated one of the interviewees, quoted in the thesis.
Another woman recounted being coerced by the doctor to have an intrauterine device inserted to prevent pregnancy when her desire was to have more children, Laura Brito pointed out.
“Above all, the stereotypes are related to controlling the number of children they have. There is also a strong emphasis on Social Security monitoring to verify that they have conditions and pain resistance. They report that they asked for help, that they wanted an epidural and were denied, being told: ‘You are strong, Black women are good at giving birth,'” the researcher stated.
According to Laura Brito, there are episodes of violence that women were not aware of, gaining awareness later, particularly through works like her thesis and the Association for the Health of Black and Afro-descendant and Racialized Mothers in Portugal, of which she is a co-founder.
“It’s only when looking at other accounts that many go through the process of introspection and understand that there is a pattern,” she noted.
For the researcher, it is important that the National Health Service and its professionals reflect on discrimination issues, considering that this exercise should be “mobilized by someone from outside, with knowledge.”
Laura Brito also advocates for a more comprehensive study at the national level to understand the relationship between health services and ethnic-racial minorities.
