Incorporating Holistic Midwifery into University Midwifery Education: Exploring the challenges in Ontario and British Columbia

The development of University Midwifery Education Programs (UMEPs) has been a key component of the midwifery professionalization process in Ontario and British Columbia. The choice to develop UMEPs has set a standard for professional midwifery training. The goal of this study is to highlight the gendered struggles of midwifery, as a female dominated and historically marginalized occupational group, in its attempt to integrate into pre-existing hierarchies of the university structure. Specific challenges of this process include tensions around inter-professional collaboration and faculty sharing with dominant disciplines such as Health Sciences and/or Medicine,enculturation of masculine/feminine professional characteristics, struggles to value practicum learning components, visibility/obscurity within the university, struggles for achieving diversity in the student/client population, gendered dimensions of earnings potential and labour im/mobility. Similarly located marginalized groups attempting integration into a university structure are likely to experience similar exclusionary measures related to factors including gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race.