‘They’re more like ordinary stroppy British women’: Attitudes and expectations of maternity care professionals to UK-born ethnic minority women

Objective To explore the attitudes and expectations of maternity care professionals to UK-born ethnic minority mothers. Methods Qualitative in-depth interviews with 30 professionals from eight NHS maternity units in England that provide services for large proportions of women of black Caribbean, black African, Indian, Pakistani and Irish descent. Results All the professionals reported providing care to both UK-born and migrant mothers from ethnic minorities. Most of them felt that they could differentiate between UK-born and migrant mothers based mainly on language fluency and accent. ‘Westernized dress’ and ‘freedom’ were also cited as indicators. Overall, professionals found it easier to provide services to UK-born mothers and felt that their needs were more like those of white English mothers than those of migrant mothers. UK-born mothers were generally thought to be assertive and expressive, and in control of care-related decision-making whereas some South Asian Muslim women were thought to be constrained by family influences. Preconceived ideas about ethnic minority mothers' tolerance of pain in labour, use of pharmacological pain relief measures and mode of delivery were recurring themes. Women's education and social class were felt to be major influences on the uptake of maternity care, regardless of ethnicity. Conclusions Professionals appeared to equate the needs of UK-born ethnic minority women with those of white English women. Overall, this has positive implications for care provision. Despite this, specific behavioural expectations and unconscious stereotypical views were evident and have the potential to affect clinical practice

Recruiting UK-born ethnic minority women for qualitative health research -lessons learned from a study of maternity care

Abstract Recruitment of participants for health research is a vita

The shrinking world of girls at puberty: Violence and gender-divergent access to the public sphere among adolescents in South Africa

Participatory mapping was undertaken with single-sex groups of grade 5 and grade 8–9 children in KwaZulu-Natal. Relative to grade 5 students, wide gender divergence in access to the public sphere was found at grade 8–9. With puberty, girls' worlds shrink, while boys' expand. At grade 5, female-defined community areas were equal or larger in size than those of males. Community area mapped by urban grade 8–9 girls, however, was only one-third that of male classmates and two-fifths that of grade 5 girls. Conversely, community area mapped by grade 8–9 boys was twice that of grade 5 boys. Similar differences emerged in the rural site. No female group rated a single community space as more than ‘somewhat safe’. Although curtailed spatial access is intended to protect girls, grade 8–9 girls reported most places in their small navigable areas as very unsafe. Expanded geographies of grade 8–9 boys contained a mix of safe and unsafe places. Reducing girls' access to the public sphere does not increase their perceived safety, but may instead limit their access to opportunities for human development. The findings emphasise the need for better violence prevention programming for very young adolescents