Project Details
Description
The MaMas project is a 5-year interdisciplinary project funded by a EUR 1,5 million European Research Council Starting Grant. It is led by principal investigator, Associate Professor of law Céline Brassart Olsen.
1. Introduction
Many mothers in Western Europe experience some distress during the times of pregnancy, birth and postpartum, a period called “matrescence”. Although health, social and welfare laws offer some protection and accommodation to women during matrescence, the approach is fragmented and incomplete. The law has yet to address issues such as early pregnancy loss, obstetric violence, and the “motherhood penalty” at work. These experiences have been under-explored and under-theorised in law and feminist legal theory, despite their implications for the rights to health, non-discrimination, dignity, autonomy, work and equality. The lack of a holistic approach to maternal rights during matrescence represents a major problem for women’s rights and gender equity in Europe.
2. Aims and objectives
The overall aim of MaMas is to develop the first legal framework of maternal rights during matrescence, anchored in women’s embodied experiences of matrescence, and to re-imagine rights from their vantage point. Using legal comparative methods and socio-legal methods, MaMas maps and analyzes health, labor, and welfare laws at national, regional and international levels to uncover which rights women have during this transition. Through qualitative methods, it investigates women’s experiences of matrescence, including their awareness and experience of rights. Based on the legal and qualitative analyses, the project identifies gaps in the current legal approach, develops new legal language and concepts to translate women’s experiences into law, and explores risks of essentialization.
3. Research Approach
MaMas develops the first legal framework of maternal rights during matrescence anchored in the lived experiences of pregnant women and new mothers. The framework will connect the rights of mothers across the various phases and spaces of matrescence and provide important new understandings of the legal implications of recognizing mothers during matrescence as a group with specific rights.
MaMas disrupts traditional legal theories and methodologies by challenging the current legal paradigm, which is rooted in the fiction of the disembodied, autonomous, free subject of rights. Instead, MaMas recognizes pregnant women and new mothers as embodied, relational subjects of rights, while it simultaneously assesses the risk of essentialization of women as mothers that such recognition could entail.
It does so by investigating matrescence in three dimensions:
• the Phases - pregnancy, birth and postpartum;
• the Spaces - health-care facilities, the workplace, home and public spaces; and
• the Faces – mothers, health care professionals, employers, partners.
This three-dimensional approach provides the analytical frame for MaMas, which is organized around four, inter-related research objectives that translate into four subprojects (SPs). SP1 develops the theoretical design, which combined with the three-dimensional analytical frame supports the work of SP2-4:
SP1. Theoretical design – SP1 develops an innovative legal theory and related methodology, which critically examines dominant legal paradigms and legal constructions of pregnancy, birth and motherhood, while putting women’s lived experience of matrescence at the center in light of the history of pregnancy and motherhood in feminist theory.
SP2. Mapping and analyzing the law – SP2 maps and analyzes women’s rights during matrescence in international human rights instruments, European, and selected national legislation and case law from Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom to identify patterns about pregnancy, birth and motherhood.
SP3. Listening - In light of the maternal rights mapped in SP2, SP3 explores the lived experiences of women during matrescence in the selected countries, particularly, their awareness and lived experience of the law, and the potential lack of legal language and rights during the phase of matrescence;
SP4. Re-imagining - In light of mothers’ rights and lived experience of rights, SP4 evaluates the potential of existing rights for the advancement of mothers’ interests, and identifies the gaps, and potential need for new concepts, language, and rights.
4. Team
The project team, led by the principal investigator Céline Brassart Olsen, involves one researcher in anthropology, one researcher in welfare/social law, and one researcher in health and human rights, as well as collaborators at Roskilde University, the University of Copenhagen, University of South Denmark, Århus University (Denmark), the University of Poitiers (France), Columbia University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA).
5. Contribution
MaMas breaks new theoretical ground by constructing a legal theory of maternal rights during matrescence. Using a gender embodiment lens, it explores for the first time new pathways for the recognition of women’s rights during matrescence. This includes the development of less known legal concepts and language, such as inter-dependency rights, right to time, respectful corporal rights, and the interrogation of the legal status of unpaid childcare work.
1. Introduction
Many mothers in Western Europe experience some distress during the times of pregnancy, birth and postpartum, a period called “matrescence”. Although health, social and welfare laws offer some protection and accommodation to women during matrescence, the approach is fragmented and incomplete. The law has yet to address issues such as early pregnancy loss, obstetric violence, and the “motherhood penalty” at work. These experiences have been under-explored and under-theorised in law and feminist legal theory, despite their implications for the rights to health, non-discrimination, dignity, autonomy, work and equality. The lack of a holistic approach to maternal rights during matrescence represents a major problem for women’s rights and gender equity in Europe.
2. Aims and objectives
The overall aim of MaMas is to develop the first legal framework of maternal rights during matrescence, anchored in women’s embodied experiences of matrescence, and to re-imagine rights from their vantage point. Using legal comparative methods and socio-legal methods, MaMas maps and analyzes health, labor, and welfare laws at national, regional and international levels to uncover which rights women have during this transition. Through qualitative methods, it investigates women’s experiences of matrescence, including their awareness and experience of rights. Based on the legal and qualitative analyses, the project identifies gaps in the current legal approach, develops new legal language and concepts to translate women’s experiences into law, and explores risks of essentialization.
3. Research Approach
MaMas develops the first legal framework of maternal rights during matrescence anchored in the lived experiences of pregnant women and new mothers. The framework will connect the rights of mothers across the various phases and spaces of matrescence and provide important new understandings of the legal implications of recognizing mothers during matrescence as a group with specific rights.
MaMas disrupts traditional legal theories and methodologies by challenging the current legal paradigm, which is rooted in the fiction of the disembodied, autonomous, free subject of rights. Instead, MaMas recognizes pregnant women and new mothers as embodied, relational subjects of rights, while it simultaneously assesses the risk of essentialization of women as mothers that such recognition could entail.
It does so by investigating matrescence in three dimensions:
• the Phases - pregnancy, birth and postpartum;
• the Spaces - health-care facilities, the workplace, home and public spaces; and
• the Faces – mothers, health care professionals, employers, partners.
This three-dimensional approach provides the analytical frame for MaMas, which is organized around four, inter-related research objectives that translate into four subprojects (SPs). SP1 develops the theoretical design, which combined with the three-dimensional analytical frame supports the work of SP2-4:
SP1. Theoretical design – SP1 develops an innovative legal theory and related methodology, which critically examines dominant legal paradigms and legal constructions of pregnancy, birth and motherhood, while putting women’s lived experience of matrescence at the center in light of the history of pregnancy and motherhood in feminist theory.
SP2. Mapping and analyzing the law – SP2 maps and analyzes women’s rights during matrescence in international human rights instruments, European, and selected national legislation and case law from Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom to identify patterns about pregnancy, birth and motherhood.
SP3. Listening - In light of the maternal rights mapped in SP2, SP3 explores the lived experiences of women during matrescence in the selected countries, particularly, their awareness and lived experience of the law, and the potential lack of legal language and rights during the phase of matrescence;
SP4. Re-imagining - In light of mothers’ rights and lived experience of rights, SP4 evaluates the potential of existing rights for the advancement of mothers’ interests, and identifies the gaps, and potential need for new concepts, language, and rights.
4. Team
The project team, led by the principal investigator Céline Brassart Olsen, involves one researcher in anthropology, one researcher in welfare/social law, and one researcher in health and human rights, as well as collaborators at Roskilde University, the University of Copenhagen, University of South Denmark, Århus University (Denmark), the University of Poitiers (France), Columbia University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA).
5. Contribution
MaMas breaks new theoretical ground by constructing a legal theory of maternal rights during matrescence. Using a gender embodiment lens, it explores for the first time new pathways for the recognition of women’s rights during matrescence. This includes the development of less known legal concepts and language, such as inter-dependency rights, right to time, respectful corporal rights, and the interrogation of the legal status of unpaid childcare work.
| Acronym | MaMas |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Effective start/end date | 01/01/2026 → 31/12/2030 |