9 Feb 2021 5:00pm - 7:00pm ONLINE SESSION (UK Time)

Description

This is an online event hosted via Zoom. Registration is now closed.


Book Discussion ‘Women’s Medicine. Sex, Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective (1920-70)’

Speaker

Caroline Rusterholz (Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge)

Discussant

Laura Kelly (Senior Lecturer in the History of Health and Medicine at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow)

Chair

Yuliya Hilevych (Faculty of History, University of Cambridge)

 

Abstract

Women's medicine highlights British female doctors' key contribution to the production and circulation of scientific knowledge around contraception, family planning and sexual disorders between 1920-70. It argues that women doctors were pivotal in developing a holistic approach to family planning and transmitting it across borders, playing a more prominent role in shaping scientific and medical knowledge than previously acknowledged.
Illuminating women doctors' agency in the male-dominated field of medicine, it reveals their practical engagement with birth control and later family planning clinics in Britain. It explores their participation in the development of the international movement and their influence on French doctors. Drawing on a wide range of archived and published medical materials, Rusterholz sheds light on the strategies British female doctors used and the alliances they made to put forward their medical agenda and position themselves as experts and leaders.

 

About the Speaker

Dr Caroline Rusteholz is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Faculty of History. She is a co-founder and co-convenor of Health Medicine and Agency. Her work brings a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to major problems in the social history of medicine, history of sexual health and reproductive politics in 20th Century Europe.

 

 
 
Women's medicine

Sex, family planning and British female doctors in transnational perspective, 1920–70

By Caroline Rusterholz

Women's medicine highlights British female doctors' key contribution to the production and circulation of scientific knowledge around contraception, family planning and sexual disorders between 1920-70. It argues that women doctors were pivotal in developing a holistic approach to family planning and transmitting it across borders, playing a more prominent role in shaping scientific and medical knowledge than previously acknowledged. Illuminating women doctors' agency in the male-dominated field of medicine, this book reveals their practical engagement with birth control and later family planning clinics in Britain, their participation in the development of the international movement and their influence on French doctors. Drawing on a wide range of archived and published medical materials, Rusterholz sheds light on the strategies British female doctors used and the alliances they made to put forward their medical agenda and position themselves as experts and leaders.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Giving birth control medical credentials in Britain, 1920-70
2 Sexual disorders and infertility, expanding the work of the clinics
3 Medicalizing birth control at the international conferences (1920-37), a British-French comparison
4 Building a transnational movement for family planning 1927-70
5 Testing IUDs, a transnational journey of expertise
Conclusion

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An event organised by Health, Medicine and Agency Research Network
Administrative assistance: networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk


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