Russian Women as Mothers, Consumers, Citizens and Patients: Childbirth Care in St. Petersburg

This lecture analyzes practices of planning childbirth as an intersectional arena of citizenship, motherhood, patienthood and class. Based on qualitative research, Dr. Anna Temkina show how women – as responsible mothers, citizens, demanding consumers and trusting patients – make choices and negotiate medical encounters in different institutional settings. Practices of choice also encounter institutional barriers, and work as a mechanism of constructing class boundaries. Finally, Dr. Temkina describe the social and emotional outcomes of childbirth for different groups of women striving to plan their private lives.

Anna Temkina received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki in 1997. She is currently the Chair in Public Health and Gender, and Co-Director of the Gender Program at the European University of St. Petersburg, Russia. She is the author of Women’s Sexual Life: between Freedom and Subordination (2008; in Russian), Russia in Transition (1997; in English). She is the co-editor of In Search of Sexuality (2002), New Byt: Gender Studies of Everyday Life (2009), Health and Intimate life (2011), and 12 Lectures in Gender Sociology (2015) (in Russian).

Co-sponsored by Carolina Women’s Center.