Midwives in China ‘jie sheng po’ to ‘zhu chan shi’》.pdfVIP

ARTICLE IN PRESS Midwifery (2009) 25, 203–212 /locate/midw Midwives in China: ‘jie sheng po’ to ‘zhu chan shi’ Amanda Harris, BSc(Hons), PhD (Senior Research fellow)a,, Suzanne Belton, BA(Hons), PhD (Research Fellow)a a , Lesley Barclay, AO, PhD (Chair of Health Services Development and Co-Director) , Jenny Fenwick, MN, PhD (Associate Professor of Midwifery)b aGraduate School for Health Practice, Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia bSchool of Nursing and Midwifery Curtin University of Technology and King Edward Memorial Hospital Curtin, Western Australia Corresponding author. E-mail address: amanda.harris@.au (A. Harris). Received 26 September 2006; received in revised form 29 November 2006; accepted 18 January 2007 Abstract We explore the position of midwifery in contemporary China, and draw on fieldwork conducted in Shanxi and Sichuan Provinces during 2005 and 2006, the available literature in English and to a lesser extent in Mandarin. We also explore the historical antecedents to the present-day professional status, practices and position within the health- care system of midwifery in China. We consider the effect on midwifery of the place of biomedicine in the modernising project of the post-reform State, the shift of birth from the private to the public domain, the rise of the medical profession, the medicalisation of birth and the increasing use of technology, and trace changes in the nature of relations between midwives, doctors and the State from Imperial China to the present day. In particular, we examine the changes that have occurred as midwifery has moved from the arena of the lay practitioner (‘jie sheng po’) to the prof