In this article the author focus on the role of the independent midwives in Italy and
Spain, where she conducted her fieldwork between 2010 and 2015. Emerging data
show that in these contexts – where the medicalisation of childbirth dominates –
independent midwives are today the keepers of the physiology and of the female
knowledge relating to birth. A central concept is “respect”; around this concept orbits
the midwives’ vision of the process and all the practices that are deployed during
the caring process. To beand to dooutside the widespread system allow independent
midwives to critically examine the assumptions and paradigms of scientific medicine,
but also wider social processes. In this sense, a social, a cultural and a political role of
the independent midwives was highlighted.
