Violência institucional em maternidades públicas: hostilidade ao invés de acolhimento como uma questão de gênero / Institutional Violence in State-run Maternity Facilities: hostility instead of care as a gender question

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2010

RESUMO

Institutional violence in maternity facilities is the subject of study in several countries. Researches show that besides economic and structural difficulties, which are frequent in state-run facilities, there are, underlying the abuse experienced by patients, socio-cultural aspects related to a discriminatory practice towards gender, social class and ethnicity. The hypothesis of this work is that institutional violence in maternity facilities is essentially a gender-based violence which, guided by stereotypical cultural meanings of devaluation and subjugation of woman, discriminates her by her gender condition and takes her as object of others actions. This violence is expressed particularly in the context of the confidence crisis that contemporaneous medical technology engenders, with the weakening of bonds and interactions between professionals and patient. The objective of this study was to investigate how and why the institutional violence occurs in state-run maternity facilities in the Brazilian context. The work was carried out through qualitative research with 21 semi-structured interviews with birthing women treated at state-run maternity facilities in city of São Paulo and 18 interviews with health professionals working in different facilities in São Paulo and adjacent cities. The analysis of the material sought reports of institutional violence in the statements of the people interviewed and the values and opinions associated to them. The data showed that both birthing women and professionals interviewed acknowledge discriminatory practices and rude treatment in the state-run maternity facilities to such a degree that it is often expected by patients to suffer some kind of mistreatment. Structural difficulties, personal and professional education, and even the impunity of such acts were identified as causes of institutional violence. The reports also showed a trivialization of institutional violence through the use of moralistic and discriminatory jargon, used in jokes by professionals; through the use of threats as a way to persuade the patient and through the idea of naturalization of labor pain as the price to be paid to become a mother. We believe that the trivialization of violence points to the trivialization of injustice and suffering of others as a social phenomenon that affects the whole society, to the weakening of the ties of personal interaction between professionals and patients and for the crystallization of stereotypes of class and gender that reflect in the care for these patients, besides contributing to the invisibility of violence as a theme for reflection and institutional control

ASSUNTO(S)

power (psychology) poder (psicologia) violência contra mulheres violence against women hospitals maternity maternidades medicina medicine

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