Empowering Women’s Narratives: Unravelling the Dominant Narrative on Pregnancy and Childbirth

In this paper, I will argue, following Adrianne Rich (1976), that there is a lack of narrative about the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth constructed from women’s perspectives that can reflect the embodied and lived aspects of pregnancy and childbirth. The dominant narrative portrays these experiences as passive and mechanical, perpetuating the image of pregnant, parturient, and postpartum women as passive, weak, fragile, and unreliable subjects. By looking at the historical development of women’s role in the reproductive process since the 5th century – both in the medical-scientific (Filippini 2017) and symbolic levels (Muraro 2022; Cavarero 2023; Prezzo 2023) – I aim to unravel the roots of this dominant narrative. By emphasising the importance of narratives, particularly in healthcare (Frank 1995), I will explore the epistemological, phenomenological, and practical consequences arising from the absence of an embodied narrative of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as women’s internalisation of the dominant narrative (Sbisà 1996; MacLellan 2022). I will focus in particular on the practical consequences, arguing that it is possible to interpret this absence – and the resulting internalisation of the dominant narrative – as a form of “hermeneutical injustice” (Fricker 2007), which in turn has determined a form of “testimonial quieting” and “testimonial smothering” (Dotson 2011). Finally, I will argue that women need to develop their own narratives about pregnancy and childbirth. However, I will also emphasise that this development would be insufficient to overcome all epistemological, phenomenological, and practical consequences.