Calendar

7 Women in Charge meeting. The Women in Charge February event will take place on Tues., Feb. 7 at 5:00 p.m. at the Urban League of RI, 246 Prairie Ave., Prov., RI in the administrative conference room.  To celebrate Black History Month, MJ Daley will do a presentation on famous Black women.  Please RSVP by return email. Members of the 5th Anniversary Planning Commiittee will meet at 4:00 p.m. For more information and to RSVP contact Charlene Kneath.

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8 RI NOW Meeting. Join RI NOW at the William Hall Library (1825 Broad Street, Cranston) from 6-8pm for an informative evening regarding legislative issues of concern to RI NOW. We will be joined by Paula Hodges of Planned Parenthood Southern New England, Ali Wolfson of Rhode Islanders for Fair Elections, and Rachel Orsinger of the RI Coalition Against Domestic Violence. RSVP on facebook.

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9 PPSNE Public Affairs Open House.

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13 Choice Coalition Meeting. For more information, contact Paula Hodges.

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14 URI Lecture: ”Mothers of Invention: Birthing Babies in a ‘Post-feminist’ Era.” Lippitt 402, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 4-5:15 p.m. Description: Public discourse on the role of choice in giving birth has taken on increasing significance as the result of two recent and diametrically opposed trends in the U.S.: a rising Cesarean-section rate that reached 32.9 percent in 2010 – a fifty percent increase in just a decade – and a historic increase in the number of women who give birth outside of the hospital environment. Media reports and research studies, in attempting to uncover the origin of these developments, polarize even the experts. Lurking behind policy statements and medical jargon is the social reality that these changes in how women give birth in the U.S. today are not simply medical, but structural –brought about by enormous social, economic, legal, and political changes that have taken place over the last century. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three states and 109 qualitative, in-depth interviews with physicians, midwives, childbirth educators, and mothers, my research revealed that the rhetoric of safety, choice and control dominate mothers’ understandings of pregnancy and birth, though the extent to which they rely on each of these concepts varies depending on whether they give birth at home, in birth centers, or in hospitals and on the type of care provider in attendance.  Notably, despite the significance of personal agency in their narratives, women of all backgrounds and experiences express deep anxiety about this concept and indicate ambivalence about the extent to which technology and litigation have come to dominate contemporary birth practices in the U.S.

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17 Soul @ Work