Persuasion: The Key to Changing Women's Ideas About Birth

Unintended Consequences of Gender Equality Promotion in Swedish Multicultural Contraceptive Counseling: A Discourse Analysis

In this article, we explore how reproductive health care providers in Sweden, a country often described as one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, incorporate gender equality ideals in multicultural contraceptive counseling. In the tension between gender equality promotion on one hand and respect for cultural diversity and individualized care on the other, we will demonstrate that values of gender equality were often given priority. This is not necessarily undesirable. Nevertheless, our proposal is that the gender equality ideology may inhibit providers' ability to think differently about issues at stake in contraceptive counseling, which may negatively influence women's possibilities to obtain adequate support. At the end of the article, we suggest how health care providers' reflexivity might be used as a working tool for increased awareness about the taken-for-granted cultural norms that exist in their clinical milieu.

How do women who plan home birth prepare for childbirth?

In this column, the findings of a secondary analysis of data from a larger qualitative study of the experience of home birth are discussed. The aim was to describe the ways in which women who plan home birth prepare for their births. The findings provide support for the idea of birth preparation and education occurring throughout pregnancy and describe the ways in which women planning to give birth at home develop confidence, plan for support, and make decisions related to the particulars of the labor and birth. Implications of these findings for childbirth education are explored.