Field entry, published 2026-11-03, updated 2026-11-03. Group: Health occupations across ISCO-08

How are midwives classified in general terms?

Midwives in ISCO-08 are grouped around care during pregnancy, labour, birth, and the postnatal period, and they appear at two broad levels. Professional midwifery sits in Major Group 2, while associate professional midwifery sits in Major Group 3, with the level reflecting the breadth of assessment, planning, and autonomous judgement in the role. The shared centre is maternity care, not general nursing or general medical work, and that centre is what holds the midwifery grouping together across different health systems.

What maternity tasks form the heart of midwifery?

Midwifery work typically includes monitoring pregnancy, supporting women through labour and birth, caring for mothers and newborns after birth, giving advice on feeding, recovery, and infant care, recognising complications, and referring onward when specialist help is needed. It also includes record keeping, health education, and support for families during a period of major change. Some midwives work mainly in hospitals, others mainly in community settings or homes, and some combine clinic work with home visiting. The place of work varies, yet the maternity focus remains the thread. When that focus fades and general nursing or general medical duties dominate, the task profile points elsewhere, which is why the centre of the work matters more than the building where it happens.

In what ways do professional and associate midwifery roles differ?

Professional midwifery in general terms carries broader responsibility for assessing pregnancy and birth, planning maternity care, managing normal birth, detecting problems, and deciding when referral is needed. Associate professional midwifery in general terms carries more defined maternity support tasks, such as assisting with care plans, monitoring mothers and babies, providing routine postnatal support, and reporting concerns, within guidance set by professionals. Both require skill, knowledge, and care, and the difference is not a judgement about personal worth. It is a classification difference in task complexity, range, and autonomy. Countries organise maternity services differently, with different training and titles, so the ILO approach again looks past the label to the duties performed.

A useful way to picture the difference is to ask three questions about a role. Does the role assess and plan maternity care, or mainly deliver tasks within a plan made by someone else. Does it take independent decisions about normal birth and referral, or does it escalate decisions upward as a routine matter. Does its daily work span the full maternity pathway, or concentrate on defined parts of that pathway. Those questions illuminate the level, but they do not by themselves assign a code, and borderline roles still need the full ILO descriptions.

Why is midwifery not simply folded into nursing or medicine?

Midwifery shares ground with both neighbours, yet its task bundle is distinct enough for ISCO-08 to keep it visible. Nursing covers a much wider range of illness and care needs, while midwifery concentrates on the maternity pathway. Medicine covers diagnosis and treatment across the whole range of disease, while midwifery concentrates on normal pregnancy and birth, with referral when complications require medical care. Folding midwifery away would lose information about a workforce whose skills, caseload, and service role are specific to maternity care, and workforce planners would struggle to see whether maternity capacity was growing, shrinking, or shifting between levels. Keeping midwifery distinct therefore serves the statistical purpose of the classification, which is to make comparable work visible.

What should readers watch for when comparing midwifery across countries?

Titles and scopes vary widely. In some systems, midwives practise with a high degree of autonomy, including managing birth independently and ordering relevant care. In other systems, midwives work more closely under medical direction, with a narrower scope. In some places, the same word covers both professional and associate roles, while in others, separate titles mark the levels. A reader comparing numbers across countries should therefore ask whether the figures include both levels, one level only, or a mix shaped by national titles. Without that check, a rise or fall in midwife numbers might reflect a change in labelling or scope rather than a change in the actual maternity workforce. The ILO structure helps by providing a common task based language for that check, even when national systems differ.

How does this guide relate to the authoritative ILO text?

This guide is an introduction in general terms, and the ILO ISCO-08 structure remains the authority. Readers who need detail should read the midwifery related group descriptions in the health professional and health associate professional areas, noting how assessment, planning, and autonomy are worded at each level. No detailed codes are listed here, and no personal placement is offered, because a sound placement would require a complete description of main duties and a careful match against those ILO descriptions. The value of this page lies in giving readers the right questions to take to that authoritative text.

Sources checked

1. ILO: ISCO-08

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