From around the world, report the impact of new COVID-19 restrictions on their ability to provide continuous emotional, physical, and informational support to pregnant people and their families. In a qualitative survey conducted in March and April 2020, we heard from over 500 doulas in 24 countries. Doulas practicing across the world revealed rapid changes to hospital policies. Even accounting for different public health responses across countries, the doulas in our study pointed to one common theme - their absence at births and the subsequent need to support birthing people virtually. In a follow-up survey and in interviews we conducted in July, we reconnected with doulas from our initial study to track their access to institutional birthing spaces. As countries experienced the effects of “flattening the curve,” we found that doulas were still not considered “essential” workers and the majority could not attend births. Our research shows that doulas have ambiguous feelings about the efficacy of virtual support, that they raise concerns about the long-term impact of COVID on their profession and that they are concerned about mistreatment and obstetric violence as birthing people enter hospitals alone.
Colombia has a comprehensive system of truth, justice and reparation stemming from its history with the justice and peace process and its most recent peace agreement. Although indigenous women are the most affected before, during and after conflict, their participation is marginalized within this political context. This article discusses how Colombian transitional justice can be reconfigured when indigenous women's practices and knowledge travel 'from the margins' to the center. We seek to demonstrate how these practices legitimize gender and other types of violence in the name of tradition and also how indigenous women's experiences go beyond the gendered perspective of violence as a 'weapon of war.' Working within the context of the peace process, we gathered data through learning and teaching techniques with indigenous women in three indigenous contexts (Sierra, Pan-Amazon region and Choco ´). Our focus is on the interaction between local transitional justice practices and the violence against indigenous women, their resistance practices and the peacebuilding agendas used to implement transitional justice in Colombia.
The rise of COVID-19 cases at hospitals translates to shifting policies about who can be present at births. Our research looks at data from nearly 400 qualitative surveys on how doulas—women who provide continuous emotional, physical, and informational support to pregnant and laboring people—navigate new restrictions redefining who belongs and is considered an “essential” birth worker in hospitals in the United States. The spectrum of new hospital guidelines spans from allowing only certified doulas, oftentimes with their own personal protective equipment (PPE) and on pre-approved hospital lists, to forcing pregnant people to choose only one support person, and in extreme cases, to banning any labor support—doula or partner. We examine what doulas reported about the changing hospital policies and shifting landscapes of belonging, thinking through what these contestations mean for birth.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.