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Despite Sweden having high levels of gender equality and low maternal and neonatal mortality, mistreatment and discrimination of women exists in maternity care. However, there are a lack of quantitative studies on the association between women’s experiences of mistreatment and discrimination and their minority status.

A new research project at the Department of Public Health Sciences will investigate the extent to which such an association exists and, how it is being manifested.

The researchers will examine the risk of women experiencing mistreatment and discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, single motherhood, and body weight. Furthermore, they will evaluate whether these experiences are influenced by individual factors like pregnancy complications, and health system factors such as limited health care capacity. Other broader societal contextual factors, such as the emergence of political parties employing xenophobic populist rhetoric, may also be assessed.

Can Liu, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University.

“If somebody falls out of ‘the norm’ – being considered a minority with regard to race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, marital status or body weight – maybe that person would find it much harder to access quality care provided by the social and health systems. Because the systems were built for people who fit ‘the norm’.” says Can Liu, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University and principal investigator of the research project.

Will use Swedish national register and survey data

In order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, the researchers will use Swedish national register and survey data. Since 2020, a survey has been sent to every woman who has given birth in Sweden – at 25 weeks of pregnancy, eight weeks after giving birth and then one year after the child is born.

By linking and analysing this anonymized data, the research project will examine the risk of experiencing mistreatment and discrimination among multiple minority status women who have given birth and their co-parents, and evaluate whether these experiences are modified by different individual, health system, and contextual factors. The project will also explore language models and machine learning methods in analysing free-text responses that describe manifestations of mistreatment and discrimination.

The project Mistreatment and Discrimination in Maternity Care for Women of Minority Status (MISMATCH) starts in January 2024 and runs for three years.

Håkan Soold