Joanne Motiño Bailey is a Women’s Studies professor and midwife at the University of Michigan. She teaches Women’s Studies 220 – “Perspectives in Women’s Health”. This week, Her Campus had the unique opportunity to speak to her about her passion and career!
Her Campus: Where are you from and what did you study as a student?
Joanne Motiño Bailey: I originally grew up in Midland, MI, which is about two hours north from here, in Dyke, Dow Chemical, and dioxin land. It’s a conservative, highly educated, upper-middle class white community, and I couldn’t wait out get out of there. I came to the University of Michigan and ultimately ended up getting a degree in Japanese Language and Literature. I spent a year studying in Japan in my junior year of college. I also did my pre-med requirements.
I then was a healthcare volunteer in Honduras for 3 years, and thought I was going to go to medical school when I came back, and then changed my mind and became a midwife, and finished a PhD.
HC: Is there a reason you switched career paths?
JMB: There are a host of reasons. One was when I was in undergraduate I felt a very strong calling to work in women’s health. In my mind that translated to ‘Oh I should be a doctor’. I hadn’t looked at other professional options or opportunities, but then when I was in Honduras, I worked with many doctors, but also a lot of really fabulous nurses and a few midwives from England, and it opened my eyes to other career options. It really helped me see that my favorite thing is really walking with women through difficult life processes. Birth and pregnancy can be wonderful and joyous, but can also be really difficult and really devastating, and I wanted to have close relationships with the women and families that I care for.
HC: What takes up your time besides teaching Women’s Studies and being a midwife?
JMB: From a professional standpoint that pretty much takes up all of my time. My other big role is I’m a single mom. Though my kids are getting older now, I have a teenager and one in college, and I have spent all rest of my free time being supportive of them and their growing up.
HC: What does a typical day look like for you?
JMB: I don’t really have very typical days because I do different things every day, but a typical week would have me teaching Perspectives in Women’s Health, meeting with students, working at least 4-8 hours in a clinic, caring for pregnant women, and then probably another ten hours a week of meetings, thinking about broader picture things like, ‘how do we change our services or improve them’. I sit in on a lot of meetings that talk about how our institutions provide maternity care and how to do it better. And then I spend probably another twenty hours a week doing paper work associated with that. I also supervise twenty-five people, so being a support person for them when they have issues, or following up. I spend a lot of time being a support person for many people actually; it’s so much of my job. So if think about being a midwife, which is walking with people through difficult situations, I feel like I do that for women and families that I care for, I do that for the midwives I supervise, I do that for my GSIs who I supervise, and I do that for my students. So in many ways, when I think about being a midwife, which the roots of the word “midwife” means “with woman”, it’s just being with people in whatever they’re challenges are. That’s challenges in learning, that’s challenges in how you feel, that’s challenges in how able to balance work and life – it’s a very maternal role in some ways, and then I’m a mom, so it’s like I’m a midwife and a mom; that’s all I do!
HC: How did you get involved in women’s studies?
JMB: When I was doing my PhD work, I really wanted to look much more at critical feminist theory to understand individual health experiences that I was seeing. In nursing, you pick a phenomenon or a problem that you see, and then you think about how to understand it in a bigger context. Getting involved in Women’s Studies helped me spend my time thinking about the larger social world, and how the social world impacts a women’s body differently.
So teaching Women’s Studies 220 is so fabulous because I get to share some of those insights, and also things that I am trying to understand better with a whole bunch of students, and it helps me learn more.
HC: Why do you do what you do?
JMB: Well first of all, 99% of the time I love it. I love catching babies. I worked all night Saturday night. On Friday night, I was in the Emergency Room doing a sexual assault exam on a sexual assault survivor. On Monday morning, I was in clinic with fifteen women and their families that I was seeing during pregnancy. Then Monday afternoon I was at a staff meeting with my group of midwives talking about how we are going to do things differently and how we can learn from each other’s mistakes. Those are all really exciting ways to engage with the world.
HC: What motivates you?
JMB: I think what motivates me is the desire to serve; wanting to facilitate the transformation in others. That’s the transformation of turning into a mother, and welcoming a child, or that’s the transformation of finding out you’re pregnant, deciding this isn’t the time to be pregnant, moving forward, choosing an abortion, and then supporting a woman through that process. Those are transforming moments in our lives that we remember. It’s same thing that I love about teaching 220; that there are some students who get kind of an “aha” moment where they begin to look at the world they live in and their own circumstances through new eyes, and that impacts the world.
HC: What is your favorite part about being a midwife?
JMB: I really love being at births. I had three births in the middle of the night and at all three, the partners cried at the birth. And in all three births, they were all un-medicated; they were all women who were really working so hard and having such a hard time, and they just powered through that and just had these beautiful births. Their partners were just in awe and wonder at both their strength and this miracle that their partner had created. That’s pretty great.
HC: What is your favorite part about teaching Women’s Studies 220?
JMB: Honestly, I really love teaching big lectures and having that platform to kind of dream big – to point out in very broad strokes what’s wrong with our healthcare system or how we can do it better. And of course, it’s all over simplified, but I’m allowed to just put the broad brush strokes out there. Then students can be challenged in that and then think about those same issues in a different way.
So, to have 300 students following along with that. Like tonight, we’re talking about birth, and thinking about that differently than all the media representations we’re bombarded with.
HC: What do you think defines a feminist?
JMB: Well obviously there are many definitions, but I would say my definition of feminism is to seek and expose power imbalances, and to expand freedoms so everyone can live to their greatest potential. So certainly that falls along the lines of gender, but it’s also race, cost, nation, state – all of our identities. I truly believe that when we are in a relationship of power imbalance, both parties suffer, not just the person underneath. Obviously, the person with less power suffers differently and more, but that sort of chaining together is detrimental for everyone.
HC: If you could tell all of the women in the world one thing, what would it be?
JMB: Be yourself and really follow those dreams because that gives people space to be anything. To be a stay at home mom is an awesome thing, to be a cardiothoracic surgeon is an awesome thing; you don’t have to be pigeon holed in anything. You should do what feels best to yourself.
Photo Courtesy: The Observer and Etsy