Midwives: Champions of gender equity
September 13, 2024
TORONTO: As Gender Equality Week approaches (Sep. 22-28, 2024), midwives stand proudly as champions for gender equity, including in health care. Through commitment to gender-inclusive, client-centered, pro-choice care, and tireless advocacy for pay equity, midwives are shaping a future where gender equity and reproductive justice become realities.
“By supporting individuals through their reproductive choices and working to address systemic inequities, including pay equity, midwives are driving transformative change in health care,” explains Althea Jones, Registered Midwife and President of the Association of Ontario Midwives.
Midwives deliver high-quality primary perinatal care to women, trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people. Midwifery care supports people to make informed decisions about their care according to their unique needs. Midwives provide comprehensive, community-based care for people from diverse communities, including individuals who identify as Indigenous, Black, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+, persons with disabilities, newcomers, people without health insurance, and other groups who face systemic barriers, discrimination, and harm in health care.
“As a profession made up almost exclusively of women and gender-diverse people, midwifery achieved a significant pay equity victory in 2018, when the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that government discriminated against midwives by undervaluing and undercompensating their work. As a result of this landmark decision, remedial steps have begun to close long-standing pay equity gaps. Beyond midwifery, this pay equity win has had far-reaching impacts, supporting groups using the legal system to redress gender-based and systemic discrimination,” remarks Juana Berinstein, Co-CEO.
As Ontario celebrates Gender Equality week, midwives remain at the front lines as champions of gender equity.
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AOM will arrange interviews on request. Contact Elizabeth Brandeis, Director, Government, Labour & Public Relations, at elizabeth.brandeis@aom.on.ca or (416) 568-4595.
About the Association of Ontario Midwives:
The AOM advances the clinical and professional practice of Indigenous/Aboriginal and Registered midwives in Ontario with a vision of midwives leading reproductive, pregnancy, birth, and newborn care across Ontario. There are over 1,000 midwives in Ontario, serving more than 250 communities across the province. Since midwifery became a regulated health profession in 1994, more than 400,000 babies have been born under midwifery care.