DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC:
Background: Obstetric violence (OV) is a widespread phenomenon. All over the world, and across all types of maternity services, women report being treated in a way that leaves them feeling hurt, dismissed, and overall traumatized by their birthing experience. Historically, however, the conceptualization of OV is rooted in the context of Latin American countries, and a lot of the research thereafter has focused on low and middle-income countries. Valuable research has looked at how OV manifests and how to categorize it, what the prevalence of OV is in different parts of the world, and how to name it and not name it. It has only been in recent years that scholars have looked at OV in the context of high-income countries, and it has been widely recognized that women also experience OV in these privileged realities. Overall, it has been acknowledged that OV appears as a phenomenon that has been completely normalized, when in reality it is a violation of Human Rights. This study aims to capture the nuances of individual experiences and subjectivities of how OV manifests among women in high-income countries, using women's own words to reveal emotional and embodied dimensions by identifying recurring patterns. The “I-poems” method, which draws directly from first-person quotes found in published studies. This technique isolates “I-statements” from women’s narratives and reshapes them into poetic form. The resulting I-poems evoke the speaker’s sense of self and allow emotional insight into the lived experience of OV. This method steps outside of traditional rationalist frameworks and offers a feminist, human-centered approach to knowledge- and sense-making.

RELEVANCE TO MIDWIFERY:
Key message: To address OV, we must center women’s voices and validate the emotional truths embedded in their stories and experiences, often overlooked in clinical or policy discourse. Obstetric violence (including a three-minute presentation competition)