Struggling for “good care”

This chapter focuses on strategic actions taken by maternity care providers in order to challenge the existing status quo of resource and power allocation. Such a struggle with neoliberal and paternalistic tendencies concerns not only organizational but civic issues as well, and in this way, professional actions become political ones (in ways similar to the feminist slogan “the personal is political”). We apply feminist and strategic action field approaches to analyze new initiatives in maternity care. The chapter particularly addresses indicative cases from NGOs, professional associations and trade unions, and the grassroot activities of hospital midwives and nurses. These actors are framed as “challengers,” who contribute to the improvement of maternity care and to the empowerment of both care providers and care receivers. Midwives and doulas are struggling for “good care” via semi-formal initiatives; hospital midwives are developing professional associations; activists and an independent trade union are fighting for a maternity unit in a rural area to be kept open, and NGO fills in the gaps in care provision in situations of perinatal losses. The chapter concludes that care providers empower themselves by challenging existing rules and the institutional order, and in this way professional issues in Russia are becoming fields of political actions.