Ekaterina Borozdina

The processes of marketization and liberalization which followed the end of the socialist state wrought considerable changes to Russian maternity care. My research project focuses on the development of independent midwifery practice in the country. Departing from common assumptions about post-Soviet medical professionals as ‘victims’ of reforms, I consider midwives as institutional actors and address complex relations between commercialization of healthcare, state social policy in the field of reproduction and development of a natural model of childbirth.