ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how male healthcare providers deal with the challenges of working in the predominantly female domain of antenatal care in a rural hospital in Malawi. Our focus is a program targeted at the HIV prevention of mother-to-child transmission in which healthcare providers talk to a room full of pregnant women and give them advice.
In Malawi, just like in many other countries, antenatal care is a traditionally female profession, which is usually conducted by (female) midwives and (female) birth attendants in the local villages. However, while these antenatal professions are traditionally largely occupied by women—especially in rural villages—in the hospitals some male healthcare professionals are also involved in antenatal care.
Drawing on over 20 hours of audio-recorded HIV/AIDS counselling sessions and 40 interviews with healthcare professionals and clients, we explore some of the ways through which the male professionals manage the challenges of working in this gendered profession. More specifically, we analyse how they engage with their female clients in group counselling sessions, which aim at giving advice, building rapport, and sharing and exchanging experience and knowledge about antenatal care and childbirth in relation to HIV/AIDS. Our key findings illustrate that men are as caring in their use of language as their female counterparts shown via their use of collaborative strategies. More specifically, the male health professionals used linguistic strategies that aim at building rapport with the women; creating solidarity and an “in-group” status with the women; and offering empowering advice as trustworthy experts and confidantes in the context where women are rendered less agentive in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
