Glossary
Our work in this project is governed by commitments to intersectionality, reproductive justice and birth justice, all theoretical and praxis-oriented interventions by Black feminist thinkers.
Anti-Racism:The lens and process used to evaluate and transform all systems and structures by identifying the active role of racism in the organization of society. Anti-racism serves to challenge attitudes and beliefs upheld by white supremacy in order to dismantle power structures and systemic racism.
Anti-Colonialism: The process of challenging colonial ideas and structures. Anti-Colonialism describes a form of political and social activism that actively opposes colonial thought and attempts to dismantle colonial ideologies. Anti-Colonialism places particular emphasis on Indigenous knowledge and resistance.
Birth Justice: Analysis of interlocking oppressions and marginalizations and action on how they influence birth experiences and birth outcomes.
Cultural Appropriation: Refers to the use of cultural symbols or practices of a non-dominant culture with a lack of acknowledgment to the original significance or source. Cultural appropriation involves a power dynamic that reinforces the marginalization of a non-dominant group.
Gender Essentialism: This refers to the belief that gender is determined by biological sex only. And that biological sex is attached to particular intrinsic/ innate ways of being and ways of being understood in the world. For example, the ideas that only women can have pregnancies, that women are naturally nurtured and that men are naturally aggressive, are all gender essentialist ideas.
Informed Consent (Health Care): Process of providing a patient with a comprehensive description of the health care they will be receiving. This allows a patient to be educated on the risks, benefits, and outcomes of a particular procedure. Informed consent is a voluntary, and ongoing decision-making process that prioritizes a patient’s right to controlling and understanding what is happening to their body.
Institutional Ethnography: A methodological framework that describes the process of applying ethnographic practices to institutional systems. This allows for an understanding of how institutional sites are organized and the influence these systems have on individual and social experiences.
Intersectionality: A concept developed by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989-1991 considering how interlocking oppressions (race, class, gender) result in different experiences and outcomes for different groups.
Medicalization: A methodological framework that describes the process of applying ethnographic practices to institutional systems. This allows for an understanding of how institutional sites are organized and the influence these systems have on individual and social experiences.
Power: How the ability to assert control, influence, and authority over an individual or group is granted and reinforced, as well as how individuals and groups resist enactments of oppressive power. Power describes the broad concept that governs conflict and structures relations in terms of domination and subordination.
Reproductive Justice: Reproductive justice applies intersectionality to reproductive politics. As Loretta Ross, leading theorist of reproductive justice notes: "In doing so, reproductive justice has eclipsed the binaried and under-theorized pro-choice/pro-life frameworks among both women of color and predominantly white organizations" (Ross, 2017, p. 287).