DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC:
Childbirth care in Brazil is marked by an excess of interventions such as inductions, cesarean sections, and episiotomies, as well as low adherence to humanized and safe practices. This results in high rates of maternal mortality and complaints of obstetric violence, disproportionately affecting poor and black women. Despite recommendations from public policies to expand midwives' work, such practices are met with resistance. This is a qualitative research that interviewed in depth two groups of midwives (traditional midwives in Amazonas and midwives trained at USP) about how each has constructed their care practices, in contexts of adversity to their work. The analysis was based on the theoretical framework of gender studies and decolonial perspectives of knowledge. Although very different in cultural and economic terms, when reflecting on their work practices, we found three thematic axes common to both groups: practices such as resistance, affection, and subversion. Each group describes their practices as a political act to protect women's rights and seeks their inclusion in the public health at the same time as they seek to construct new anti-racist and anti-misogynistic narratives about their bodies and the event of childbirth. Keywords: decolonial obstetrics, care practices, midwives, traditional midwives.

RELEVANCE TO MIDWIFERY:
Several strategies to change the care model have been implemented without success to empower midwives in their workplaces in Brazil. Through this research, it was possible to identify practices as a political act to confront social, political, and economic difficulties that were presented here as resistance, affection, and subversion: paths towards a decolonial obstetrics, which subverts misogyny and structural racism for the construction of obstetric knowledge and practices. Physiological - labor progress (including three-minute presentation competition)