Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 26 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 27 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

All days
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Wednesday 24 March 2004 10:45
T-2 SEX02 Nurses, Radicals, Doctors
Room U
Network: Sexuality Chair: Lutz Sauerteig
Organizers: - Discussant: Natalia Gerodetti
Hera Cook : 'Friction under emotional circumstances' ? Dr Joan Malleson and interpretations of female sexuality among English women in the birth control movement
'Friction under emotional circumstances' ? Dr Joan Malleson and interpretations of female sexuality among English women in the birth control movement

Dr Joan Malleson (1900-1956) belonged to the Worker's Group for Birth Control in the 1920s. A letter from her to the New Statesman and Nation in 1934 was the first ... (Show more)
'Friction under emotional circumstances' ? Dr Joan Malleson and interpretations of female sexuality among English women in the birth control movement

Dr Joan Malleson (1900-1956) belonged to the Worker's Group for Birth Control in the 1920s. A letter from her to the New Statesman and Nation in 1934 was the first move toward the founding of the Abortion Law Reform Association, in which she played a major role and which constantly emphasised that working-class women were denied access to the safe medical abortions that middle-class women were able to purchase. However by the 1930s, she was also working for the Family Planning Association running sexual problem clinics. Following WWII, she contributed to international debates on the defining of female sexual response and wrote an advice manual for couples with sexual problems. Alongside Michael Balint of the Tavistock Clinic, she had set up training sessions for doctors who were dealing with sexual problems. However from the late 1960s, feminists resoundingly rejected the interpretation of female sexuality as more emotional, more monogamous and focused on vaginal orgasm, which was central not only to Malleson's work but also to that of other English birth control workers such as Mary Macaulay and Helena Wright. This paper considers Malleson's life and asks why a woman who was so insistent on the need for women's control of their fertility interpreted female sexuality in such apparently limited terms? (Show less)

Lesley Hall : 'A survival... of stoning, branding, mutilation'
'A survival... of stoning, branding, mutilation'
Stella Browne's fight for abortion law reform in Britain, 1912-1955

In the scrapbook kept by Janet Chance, one of the founders of the British Abortion Law Reform Association (1936) and an early advocate of this measure, there is a chronology of the history of British laws ... (Show more)
'A survival... of stoning, branding, mutilation'
Stella Browne's fight for abortion law reform in Britain, 1912-1955

In the scrapbook kept by Janet Chance, one of the founders of the British Abortion Law Reform Association (1936) and an early advocate of this measure, there is a chronology of the history of British laws on abortion and the struggle to amend them. Between 1861 (the Offences Against the Person Act), and the early 1930s, when women's organisations began to pass resolutions demanding access to legal and medically safe abortions, there is one line: 'STELLA FIGHTS ALONE'. During a period when even birth control was a contentious issue, and its pioneers almost unanimously posited it as a beneficent alternative to the epidemic prevalence of illegal abortion, Stella Browne (1880-1955) publicly and loudly argued for safe legal abortion as essential to any meaningful birth control programme. In evidence to a Government committee investigating the subject, she admitted that she herself had undergone abortion. She did not simply regard it as something to be granted to the unfortunate in desperate circumstances but as something which should be available to all women on request. While actively campaigning to reform the legal situation, she argued that doing this would enable medical research into better methods, and in fact foresaw the introduction of safe reliable chemical abortifacients and improved contraceptives. Throughout her career she critiqued a medico-scientific establishment which produced ever more devastating weapons of war while neglecting research into means of easing women's reproductive burdens. Stella Browne's fight for abortion law reform was rooted in her tripartite commitment to feminism, socialism (she was very aware that better-off women had demi-legal access to safe abortion denied working class women) and individualism. This paper positions her in the context of the politics of reproductive choice in early twentieth century Britain and of the survival of a militant feminism in the interwar period. (Show less)

Caroline Walker : Sisters of Mercy: reconsidering the role of nursing staff in Marie Stopes' Mothers' Clinics, 1921-1939
Marie Stopes’ insistence upon maintaining a regular and detailed correspondence with the health professionals who staffed her Mothers’ Clinics has provided a rich resource recounting both the daily running of the centres and the significant concerns faced by voluntary birth control clinics in interwar Britain. Trained nurses served as the ... (Show more)
Marie Stopes’ insistence upon maintaining a regular and detailed correspondence with the health professionals who staffed her Mothers’ Clinics has provided a rich resource recounting both the daily running of the centres and the significant concerns faced by voluntary birth control clinics in interwar Britain. Trained nurses served as the mainstay of the Clinics’ medical staff; local married women with families were often selected in order to enhance the clinic’s relationship with its patients. This paper will draw upon both clinic records and correspondence, in addition to archive material from the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, to resituate the roles undertaken by individual nursing staff employed in the Mothers’ Clinics between 1921 and 1939. Highlighting their involvement in developing a relationship between the clinic and the local community, this case study will examine the specific training and instruction the nurses undertook, together with their relationships with doctors and other participants in the establishment and running of the clinics. Moreover, the paper will focus upon the individual relationships the clinic nurses developed with Marie Stopes – their response to her methods and ideas, the level of clinic autonomy achieved, and whether their individual responses to issues facing the centres impacted upon clinic policy. Staff interaction with clinic patients, including difficulties arising with clients, the promotion of favoured methods of contraception and the dissemination of birth control information to the community will also be focused upon. This study re-examines the vital involvement of clinic nursing staff in developing voluntary birth control clinics across Britain during the interwar years. In considering their roles and impact, this paper resituates their significance within the clinic structure, within the local communities and within the interwar birth control movement as a whole. (Show less)



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