And at the time this was happening in the real world, doctors still really knew nest to nothing, whereas midwives had a boatload of traditional knowledge. Doctors waged a cultural smear campaign with huge amounts of racism showing a filthy poor black woman midwife asking if they wanted that woman touching their child as well as a legal campaign to make midwifing without a medical license illegal. This of course was at the time that docs still believed in hysteria caused by uterine malfunction. Maternal and infant mortality soared. It's these sort of underhanded life endangering tactics that the men in the Northern Water Tribe would have used. I wonder if also in a Victorian model would women have become "angels of the house" and a cult of domesticity have been born as they were kicked out of their other traditional occupation? Probably.
We didn't see the lives of poor NWT members at all, if they exist. Obviously poor women have always worked.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 02:41 pm (UTC)We didn't see the lives of poor NWT members at all, if they exist. Obviously poor women have always worked.