Women Do It but Men Teach It?

Throughout history and across the globe many have regarded midwives as protectors of natural knowledge, defined in this context as an intuitive understanding of a woman's body rhythms and functions. According to this view, midwives are granted expert status because they themselves are women, and in most cases have already given birth to their own children. Through this experiential training and intuitive familiarity, the midwife garners trust from labouring women and her community alike. She becomes the community's birthing authority, taking on the responsibility of assisting pregnant women through labour, as well as various stages of the prenatal and postpartum experience. The midwife becomes a ‘wisewoman’, symbolizing an image of the procreative process as a women-centred, holistic and above all else natural event.

In contrast to such wise women are male medical intellectuals, ‘medicalmen’. Read from a Western-centric viewpoint, these medical men originated in Europe, later spreading via imperialism to the American colonies and elsewhere.