MEDICALIZATION OF THE REPRODUCTION AND CHILDBIRTH: A STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

This article aims to provide an analysis of the medicalization of childbirth. In the paper, attention is given to show how the concepts of medicalization and social control developed, especially with the influence of feminist discourse, passing over the 1980s and 1990s, when these ideas became central in the critical reflection and interpretation of reproductive health. Medical organizations and their accumulated knowledge provide expertise in reproductive practices, even though women's reproductive experiences vary in terms of the historical, geographical and social context. What can be seen is that attitudes towards the medicalization of childbirth and the necessity of a controlled delivery differ for women depending both on their specific context and the social class they belong to. Medicalization and medical control are integral components of the reproductive cycle and childbirth in modern Russia. However, doctors do not possess a sufficient degree of expert power and autonomy in their professional work; they lack that which, in other contexts, could allow them to impose their vision and control. This arises from a lack of necessary resources, extreme dependence on the state, and drastic bureaucratization of their responsibilities as doctors. Women are more interested in receiving quality obstetrics service and supervision (i.e. from respectable medical institutions and qualified specialists), than in restricting the control of the doctor or medical expertise and knowledge. Doctors, midwives, and patients are all searching for ways to adapt to bureaucratic forms through individual strategies and resources, and this has a serious effect on the medicalization of reproduction in contemporary Russia.