Carmen Barrenechea, la conciencia feminista de una matrona del siglo XIX en “La ciudad de la muerte”

Abstract

Many scholarly articles have been devoted to the study of the professional exclusion of European midwives at a time when male interest in obstetrics started to grow. There are, however, few references to the strategies adopted by midwives to defend the practice of their profession. In 1899, a midwife named Carmen Barrenechea published a request-like pamphlet, addressed to the major of the capital of Spain, in which she denounced the professional exclusion Spanish midwives were going through and vindicated the advantages of employing such professionals rather than surgeons.