Games of Life. Czech Reproductive Biomedicine. Sociological Perspectives

Šmídová, Iva; Šlesingerová, Eva; Slepičková, Lenka

doi:10.5817/cz.muni.m210-7734-2015

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 73 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It is important to note that embedded into the system of hospital care is the legacy of the strong paternalistic system present in the Czech context before 1989, and of the distorted approach to professional performance from the time of the Soviet bloc and the rapid transformation of the post-socialist period (Heitlinger, 1987;Speier et al, 2014;Šmídová et al, 2015). It is also clear, however, that the existence of such gender regimes requires urgent organizational rather than individual corrective measures.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Room for Balancing: Mothers and Professors in Czech Maternity Hospitals

Šmídová

2016

Intersections

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper analyses the complex issue of work-life balance in the medical setting of Czech maternity hospitals. The issue of work-life balance has not been dealt with adequately; the organisation of professional careers in medicine is understood in terms of making sacrifices for the profession. However, analysis of the everyday lives of members of the profession provides insight into the practices and strategies that are adopted for coping with demanding work and gender prejudices, and the striving to create a satisfactory personal life. The article targets the structural mechanisms that reproduce Czech hospital gender regimes and their effects on work-life balance according to the individual coping strategies of the actors involved. These are conceptually framed using the symbolic system of the gender universe (Harding, 1987) and the theory of gendered organisations (Acker, 1990). The empirical data used in the analysis comes from qualitative research (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014) into Czech reproductive medicine, specifically obstetrics. It is primarily based on in-depth interviews with senior physicians, although other data sources were also utilised. Physicians' own reflections of the current status quo in Czech hospitals are critically assessed and framed in a structural context with reference to the broader social mechanisms that re/produce gender in/equality in the labour market.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Room for Balancing: Mothers and Professors in Czech Maternity Hospitals

Šmídová

2016

Intersections

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similar to other late modern countries, the Czech society mitigates death through biomedical procedures – secluding to hospital wards and excluding from everyday life (Šmídová, 2019a). Death and dying are opposed to a healthy population, healthy pregnancies and safe births for the baby and mother (Šmídová et al., 2015). There is a significant turn in Western democracies regarding the de‐tabooisation of death (Walter, 1991, 1994), with similar transformations occurring in the Czech Republic after the totalitarian regime collapsed in 1989.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The first Czech perinatal hospice: Joint venture or competitive field?

Šmídová

2021

Health Social Care Comm

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is no legally established perinatal hospice in the Czech Republic. Several initiatives work towards launching an institution to support parents in the event of a fatal prenatal diagnosis or life‐limiting condition in their unborn baby. Parents use the label perinatal hospice as they subvert and transform the narrow legal and strictly medical framework for such institutions. Hospice care became a legitimate sector of care provision only recently. This study analyses four initiatives that strive to establish and formalise perinatal hospices in the Czech Republic, with a focus on the strategies these initiatives engage in to achieve change. A sociological qualitative empirical study (2017–2019) informs the findings. Initiatives vary in approach from cooperation to competition in being recognised as ‘the first perinatal hospice’. The study shows how such rhetoric is adopted to attract the funding required for sustainability. Community cooperation and involvement can, then, form a contra position.

show abstract

“…This underscoring is important because obstetricians use it to downplay the role of international requirements to improve birth care, especially the care standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is worth mentioning in this context that the public debate is also part of the larger context of the post-socialist debates on care choices (Hresanova, 2014;Hrešanová, 2017) and reproductive choices, which situate the professional conflict between obstetricians and midwives within a larger concern about how individual requirements are framed in policy choices and policy discussions (Dudová, 2012;Havelková, 2014;Šmídová et al, 2015). These concerns are demonstrated in the public debate through several moments in which policy makers have tried to pacify such individual agencies, for example through attempts to ban homebirths.…”

Section: Case: Czech Public Debate On Birth Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating the role of emotions in expertise: public framing of expertise in the Czech public controversy on birth care

Durnová

Hejzlarová

2022

Policy Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite the abundant scholarship on sociopolitical embeddedness of expertise, its relation to emotions remains understudied. The paper fills this gap by discussing how public framings of expertise work against the inclusion of emotional contexts, affecting what kind of professional knowledge dominates in a public debate. The analysis of the Czech public debate on birth care shows that while midwives embrace emotional contexts of birthing and integrate them as an essential part of their professional expertise, obstetricians see these contexts as troubling their expertise. This professional difference is sustained by the public framing of expertise in the media, favoring obstetricians’ expertise over midwives’. The analysis shows that public framing of expertise outweighs evidential work done by midwives and legal advisors and impacts how emotional contexts are understood in the debate. Rather than referring to feelings and personal experience of the body, the “emotional” becomes a discursive label to delegitimize professional opinion. The results raise thus important questions about how the public framing of expertise impacts whether emotional context and experiences of bodily harm are seen as relevant in policy debates and policy regulations.

show abstract

Games of Life. Czech Reproductive Biomedicine. Sociological Perspectives

Cited by 11 publications

References 73 publications

No Room for Balancing: Mothers and Professors in Czech Maternity Hospitals

No Room for Balancing: Mothers and Professors in Czech Maternity Hospitals

The first Czech perinatal hospice: Joint venture or competitive field?

Navigating the role of emotions in expertise: public framing of expertise in the Czech public controversy on birth care

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About