"Leave your dignity at the door" : technologies of power and the maternal body : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
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Date
2017
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Massey University
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Abstract
Women in Aotearoa New Zealand are immersed in multiple and contradictory
discourses, and create meaning of their lived experiences from within them.
Maternity and motherhood are life events and stages that are embedded in
gendered social power relations, with the motherhood mandate positioning all
women as potential mothers. A literature review highlighted how neoliberalism
and biopower both enable and constrain the experience of maternity and
mothering. This research aimed to tease apart some of the threads of power that
produce sites of tension for women and the maternal body. Semi‐structured
interviews were conducted with eleven women about their experiences of
maternity and motherhood and a feminist post‐structuralist discourse analysis
was used to understand how gendered social power relations enable and constrain
women’s experiences. The analysis showed that the neoliberal political landscape
impacted on women’s experiences, particularly where related to their everyday
experience of maternity and mothering. The biomedical becomes the ordinary in
an environment of uptake of interventions as the norm, and where a risk‐adverse
maternity system positions every potential risk as absolute. The expectation on
women to perform ‘good motherhood’ amongst the tensions of biomedical and
natural discourses also constrains them to making morally correct choices in an
environment where they have limited agency. This research sought to disrupt the
status quo of producing women as docile bodies within biomedical power and
neoliberalism, and to empower them to continue to resist.
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Keywords
Pregnancy, Childbirth, Body, Human, Social aspects, New Zealand, Research Subject Categories::SOCIAL SCIENCES::Social sciences::Psychology