As a primarily female workforce, midwives face many difficulties that are different to male health workers. They face difficulties not just because oftheirsexandthe cultural issues around being a woman and taboos associated with this work, especially a female worker functioning outside of the home, but also because of the area they work in, midwifery, which in some countries is not yet recognized as a profession.

Yet it is the fact that midwives are women, working “with woman” in partnership, as described above, that is most frequently valued by the women they care for, but too often ignored or dismissed by the system most of them work in.