Among Us Women is a documentary about Huluager, a young pregnant woman in rural Ethiopia, as she tries to make her own choices about her birth and control decisions about her own healthcare.

All the issues in this are so identifiable, and presented in the least Othering way imaginable. Patriarchy is global, and even though different contexts will manifest that in ways specific to each individual and community, the issues are the same again and again. Huluager wants to have a home birth, supported by a traditional midwife. Within 5 minutes of watching, you understand why completely. The traditional midwife is round her house, visiting throughout her pregnancy, she sits and chats with her over a cuppa and hears how she’s doing, she sweeps Huluager’s floor while she puts her feet up for a minute, she reaches under her skirt to massage her belly and her sore legs. Everything about it is on Huluager’s terms, where she is most comfortable, what makes her feel at ease, and treats her like a full human being. Then you go to the clinic, and there’s men in white coats standing at the back of the room observing women give birth, total strangers not of your choosing putting their hands on you, pulling your clothes back to expose you, lying you on your back untouched instead of holding and supporting you while you push, shooing your husband away, all knowing nothing about you and giving zero fucks about you beyond this as a medical procedure. To top it off, you have a long ambulance journey across unpaved roads while in labour on the way there, and having just given birth on the way back. And no interaction with the medical establishment is complete without being spoken to like a child, patronised, talked down to, lectured as though you have no understanding of yourself or your own life by someone who has never met you before, and treated with contempt if you make any choice that contradicts their advice, as though their wisdom is wasted on you. Like I say, very identifiable.

Of course, the healthcare workers don’t see it like that. They are there with funding to get maternity mortality and morbidity rates down. To do this, that means disrupting the status quo. They reinforce over and over again that women must give birth in the clinic, where they can be observed and treated by trained professionals. They tell this to everyone, to pregnant mothers, to community gatherings, to traditional midwives. And they are authority figures so why wouldn’t you just listen to them?

There’s never any dialogue with the medical clinicians. They never listen. They are not interested in women’s reasons for not coming to the clinic, only that they come. When one traditional midwife talks about calling the ambulance for a woman in labour, she waited 5 hours for it to show up. When traditional midwives talk about having a proven track record of birthing generations of children over decades, it’s all met with placid indifference. And no matter what happens, it will never dent their conviction that they were right. If a home birthing runs into complications, well they told you so. If it results in a successful birth and a healthy mother, then you were very lucky. And there’s never any self-reflection on what it is it they are doing that means mothers don’t want to come to them.

Among Us Women is centred on Huluager’s choices about her pregnancy and birth, but it is nestled in a larger story of a woman trying to take control of her own life, in a world which was not designed for her to do so. Yet she persists.