Research project Mistreatment and Discrimination in Maternity Care for Women of Minority Status (MISMATCH)
The project Mistreatment and Discrimination in Maternity Care for Women of Minority Status (MISMATCH) aims to systematically evaluate if women’s minority status – based on race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, single motherhood, and body weight – is associated with their experiences of mistreatment and discrimination in maternity care.
Access to respectful maternity care is fundamental for good maternal and neonatal health. Despite this, neglectful and disrespectful treatment of women* giving birth is widespread worldwide. Such mistreatment can occur both through the interaction between the woman and maternity care providers and through system failures. Despite having low maternal and neonatal death rates, the Swedish maternity care system struggles with a shortage of resources and staff, which can negatively affect women's experience of maternity care in general.
The project aims to evaluate if women’s minority status is disproportionally associated with experiences of mistreatment and discrimination. Specifically, the project will be divided into three work packages:
- Evaluate birth experiences and discrimination in Swedish maternity care
- Evaluate individual, system, and contextual factors that may modify birth experience or discrimination
- Explore manifestations of discrimination or mistreatment in maternity care
Project description
Access to respectful maternity care is fundamental for good maternal and neonatal health. Despite this, neglectful and disrespectful treatment of women* giving birth is widespread worldwide. Such mistreatment can occur both through the interaction between the woman and maternity care providers and through system failures. Despite having low maternal and neonatal death rates, the Swedish maternity care system struggles with a shortage of resources and staff, which can negatively affect women's experience of maternity care in general. Furthermore, due to the lack of resources to serve special needs, women of minority status are even more likely to suffer a negative impact of the system's failure, even though such an impact does not always manifest as the occurrence of adverse medical outcomes. This project tackles this system dilemma by shifting the main focus from the medical outcomes of pregnancy to women's lived experiences.
The project aims to evaluate if women’s minority status is disproportionally associated with experiences of mistreatment and discrimination. Specifically, the project will be divided into three work packages:
- Evaluate birth experiences and discrimination in Swedish maternity care
- Evaluate individual, system, and contextual factors that may modify birth experience or discrimination
- Explore manifestations of discrimination or mistreatment in maternity care
In this project, we use the intersectional socio-ecological framework to construct the analytical approach and understand the interactions between individual women—who may have multiple marginalised identities—the health system and the broad society. The project will use the Swedish national register and survey data to understand these topics comprehensively. Besides statistical analyses of the registered data, language models and machine learning methods will be used to explore free-text in national surveys to find patterns in the manifestations of mistreatment and discrimination.
While drawing on the women-centred perspective, the project will be conducted with acknowledgement of the distressed healthcare system and staff. Together with maternity care providers, the project will provide knowledge to facilitate the transformation towards equity in health and health care. Further, based on interdisciplinary perspectives and collaborations with healthcare workers, the project will contribute to the urgent need for evidence-based policy-making to improve the Swedish maternity care system, making it sustainable and matching the needs of women with diverse backgrounds.
* “Women”, “mother”, and “maternal” are used to refer to “women and birthing people” without assuming the actual gender identity or legal gender of the person.
Project members
Project managers
Members
Alessandra Grotta
Researcher
Ayako Hiyoshi
Guest Researcher
Ylva Brännström Almquist
Professor
Sol Juarez
Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor
Karl Gauffin
Senior Lecturer/Researcher
Andrea Dunlavy
Lecturer/Researcher
