MaMas · Mapping and Conceptualizing a Legal Framework for Maternal Rights during Pregnancy, Birth, and Early Motherhood (MaMas)

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. The overall aim of MaMas is to develop a 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 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.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 new 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.