Decision-making

• These findings led to changes in NHS policy and guidelines beginning with the landmark report Changing Childbirth in the 1990s.
• However, our recent research has revealed a disconnect between policy and the reality of how decision making happens.
• This could help explain why women still say they feel ignored when they ask for pain relief during labour.
• This is important to note beacuse black and Asian women in the UK are more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

Complexity of pain relief decisions

• No one should be denied pain relief without explanation, but our study findings show how complex decisions about pain actually are.
• One woman, who we called Fiona, requested opiate pain relief 18 times over an hour and a half.
• The midwife asked what form of pain relief Fiona had in her previous labour and the nature of her current pains.
• However, I asked for increased pain relief around 6.30am and repeatedly after that, and the midwife did not have a discussion with me about why it would be advisable not to have the pain relief until around 8.20am.
• However, I asked for increased pain relief around 6.30am and repeatedly after that, and the midwife did not have a discussion with me about why it would be advisable not to have the pain relief until around 8.20am.

Midwives lead most decisions

• When we examined how midwives initiated decisions, the majority (57%) were unilateral.
• Midwives did occasionally offer explicit choice about whether a vaginal examination should take place, but only in early labour when they suspected there was no progress.
• Otherwise, decisions about examinations tended to be pronounced, but always involved an explicit consent check beforehand.
• Overall in our recordings, birth partners typically deferred to midwives and confined themselves to providing support for their partners.

The difficulty of providing choice

• The fact that the length of labour is inherently uncertain does not help.
• Delaying or deferring decisions can leave women feeling unheard during one of the most, if not the most, vulnerable times of their lives.
• Clare Jackson receives funding from National Institute for Health and Care Research.

• We all know this feeling, this tension between what you really want to do and what you really should, or shouldn’t, do.
• It’s a psychological discomfort we feel when our behaviours and our values or beliefs do not match.
• Not to worry, we can make that discomfort simply disappear with a good dose of #GirlMaths!

So what is #GirlMaths?

• The reason #GirlMaths resonates so well with everyone and allows it to go viral is that we are very familiar with this type of thinking.
• The mental gymnastics of #GirlMaths needed to justify cost-per-wear or cash-is-free is a perfect display of behavioural biases and heuristics, such as confirmation bias and denomination bias, being applied to everyday consumption decisions.

The psychology of decision-making

• Our brain has a lot of decisions to make in a day and simply doesn’t have the power to scrutinise every little detail of every decision.
• These shortcuts in our thinking may facilitate the decision making process, but they don’t always mean we make the most optimal decisions.

The financial and social costs

• Gendered language operates to reinforce societal expectations with a particular gender and can promote stereotypes, biases and binary categories.
• When stereotypes are reinforced within our own social circles, we are more likely to internalise these as part of our identity.
• However, the convenience of these shortcuts in our thinking can obscure the hidden financial risks.
• You may overlook the bigger picture of your financial health, and spend more than what you can afford.

The perils of #GirlMaths

• While the term may initially come across as innocent fun, it’s crucial not to underestimate its potential harms.
• Instead, let’s champion the use of inclusive language in finance that doesn’t perpetuate gender biases.

• The enlargement will grow the association’s membership to 11, and increase its envisaged role as a geopolitical alternative to global institutions dominated by the west.
• The Brics five represent about 42% of the world’s population and more than 23% of world GDP.
• The disparate nature of the six new members is bound to spark debate about the real nature of Brics.
• In his welcoming remarks at the summit (22-24 August), the host, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, stated:
  Brics stands for solidarity and for progress.

Understanding the nature of Brics

• Brics is not an organisation (it has no headquarters, secretariat or treaty).
• But it does have a formal institution that is jointly owned – the New Development Bank.
• Read more:
  South Africa's role as host of the BRICS summit is fraught with dangers.
• As a political scientist interested in global politics, I have written about Brics and its potential for changing the status quo.
• With hindsight, I can assert that certain principles have informed it since its establishment and first summit in 2009.


The association self-reportedly seeks secure sustainable development for itself and the global south, to safeguard and advance multilateralism, to institute reform for the goal of representative institutions, and to achieve solidarity among members.

Economic development

• Economics comes first in the group; at its root, it is a collective of emerging economies eager to sustain and improve their economic trajectory.
• Read more:
  China’s Africa strategy is shifting from extraction to investment – driven from the industry-rich Hunan region

  The group’s first, and so far only, notable establishment is the New Development Bank, primarily to finance infrastructure development.

Multilateralism

• The second value refers to the group’s concern about the use of entities outside the UN to pursue global objectives.
• The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN.

Global governance reform

• Thirdly, the Brics countries have long pushed for leaders of global institutions to be elected in a transparent and democratic way.
• For example, the president of the World Bank has always been an American, and the managing director of the IMF a European.

Solidarity

• Finally, the members have articulated solidarity with one another in a number of declarations, beginning in 2010.
• Read more:
  When two elephants fight: how the global south uses non-alignment to avoid great power rivalries

  In light of criticism and sanctions plans against China, for its alleged suppression of the Uyghur-Muslim population, and Russia, for invading Ukraine, solidarity has come to mean silence or nonalignment.

A blank slate

• This has proved beneficial for member countries hosting Brics summits.
• They get to set the agenda and use it for their ends – without upsetting the consensus.
• Brazil and Russia have inserted issues that are important to their region, and often invited leaders of neighbouring countries to retreats.

• You’ve been to a “campout” with your school friends in someone’s back garden and taken a bunch of out-of-focus pictures on your digital camera.
• The photos must be posted in a seemingly incoherent order and be “low effort” as opposed to being obviously edited.
• This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties.
• Experts explain how to tell the difference Bed rotting: the social media trend the Victorians would love, especially writer Elizabeth Gaskell

The rise of the dump

Instagram launched the “carousel” feature in early 2017, which enables users to include up to ten images in one post. But photo dumps didn’t grace our feeds until around late 2020. There are several potential explanations for the photo dumps trend:
“Dump” implies that images have been haphazardly thrown together, but this understates the craftsmanship that goes into post curation on Instagram. Sociologist Erving Goffman argued that there’s no such thing as accidental self-presentation. All human interactions, whether they take place via social media or elsewhere, demand some level of craft and decision making.

The roots of the dump

• People usually craft their physical photo albums into one of a number of themes, like recording an event or a trip, both of which have made their way to Instagram.
• And both the dump and the album lose meaning if you aren’t known to the poster, akin to the consequences of a physical photo album being discovered at a rummage sale.
• For example, albums benefit tremendously from the white space surrounding each carefully placed image, through which authors can craft a narrative of personal memory.

The future of the dump

• Instagram, it seems, feels like a friend, familiar enough to grace with carefully curated, multi-part posts to tell stories about our daily lives.
• And so, as we grapple with new questions, promises and concerns about emerging technologies such as AI, perhaps we are drawn to using the familiar things in more intimate ways.
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