Mr Midwife breaks down barrier
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Our series on equality rolls into the UK to take a look at the men breaking into a traditionally female profession. In 1983 it became legal for men to practise midwifery. Around 100 have now risen to the challenge. But some women still find men talking about “ladies’ bits, well, a bit wrong!”
The UK's Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1976, yet it took another seven years and fierce campaigning before men were allowed into midwifery. And even today, it appears some women are still not entirely comfortable with a male midwife.
"I'd probably rather see women, to be honest, 'cause they know what it's all about,” one mother told Euranet’s Lars Bevanger.
Dennis Walsh graduated as a male midwife in 1986, three years after it was legalised. He is now one of around 100 male midwives out of a total of twenty thousand. He claims that three or four times a year an expecting mother will ask for him to be replaced by a woman solely because he is a man.
“I don't have a problem with it. The majority of the time it's not an issue, and obviously it's inappropriate to enforce it, so to speak, so the sensible and pragmatic thing to do is simply withdraw," he says.
But not everyone is opposed to the idea. One expectant mothers told us there’s no real problem: “When you're in the middle of labour it doesn't really matter who comes in and sees you. I saw male doctors, and that didn't really bother me.”
For more in our series on gender equality in Europe see:
Women's Day sheds socialist stigma
