Men Working as Midwives: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Although legislative reform in 1977 allowed men to train as midwives in the UK, they have remained a marginal presence and there has been little empirical enquiry and no in-depth qualitative studies into the phenomenon. The purpose of this work is to address this gap in knowledge. The overarching argument in this thesis is that men who become midwives are entering a contested space which has hitherto been fiercely maintained as woman-only via political, social, and cultural arguments produced from within and without the profession. Understanding the experiences of men who work as midwives will therefore generate key insights into how and why gender is produced and regulated in organizational spaces. The specific aims of this thesis are firstly to situate men in midwifery within the historical and professional literature, secondly to explore what the experiences are of men who work as midwives, and thirdly to understand why the gap in the literature has persisted. The research methodology used is Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 15 men who have worked as midwives in the UK over the past 40 years were analysed and organised within three key themes. These showed that Gender was an obstacle that needed to be negotiated, that identifying as a Minority was important for justifying their presence, and that a recognition of becoming Sexualised at work both challenged and reinforced these understandings. These themes are first discussed in dialogue with essentialist and social constructionist theories to explain the internalised complexity and uncertainty in the findings. Application of Ahmed’s theory of orientations then exposes how their bodies disrupt normal processes and how they are brought back into line. Finally, an autoethnography of the research journey explores the politics of knowledge production and the silence around men who work as midwives. This new knowledge not only supports the development of NHS policy making, but also makes new theoretical contributions to the fields of gender and masculinities, queer phenomenology, and triple hermeneutics.