CENTRE FOR WOMEN=?iso-8859-1?Q?=92S?= STUDIES IN EDUCATION PRESENTATION: "Subtle Coercions: Shaping Motherhood in New Zealand" with Ruth Desouza.

CENTRE FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES IN EDUCATION (CWSE) PRESENTS

"Subtle Coercions: Shaping Motherhood in New
Zealand" with Ruth Desouza.

BROWN BAG PRESENTATION

Monday, October 22, 2012
12—1:30pm
Room 2-227, 252 Bloor St. W.
Free, bring your lunch
cwse@utoronto.ca for information

This presentation explores the discourses deployed in New Zealand by
Plunket nurses (who provide care to women and babies in the community) to
frame their understandings of migrant mothers. This research shows how
Plunket nurses draw on liberal feminist discourses, which have
emancipatory aims but reflect assimilatory practices, paradoxically
disempowering women who do not subscribe to ideals of individual autonomy.
Feminist critiques of patriarchy in maternity must be supplemented by a
critique of the implicitly western subject of maternity to make
empowerment a possibility for all mothers.
Dr. Ruth DeSouza is a Senior Lecturer at AUT University in Auckland, New
Zealand. Ruth has worked as a nurse (in mental health, postnatal settings
and maternal mental health), educator, and researcher and is currently
completing a book on migrant maternity. She is passionately interested in
the concept of cultural safety in health.