Bodies of Knowledge

Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave

Kline Wendy

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, women argued that unless they gained access to information about their own bodies, there would be no equality. In "Bodies of Knowledge", Wendy Kline considers the ways in which ordinary women worked to position the female body at the center of women's liberation.

As Kline shows, the struggle to attain this knowledge unified women but also divided them – according to race, class, sexuality, or level of professionalization. Each of the five chapters of "Bodies of Knowledge" examines a distinct moment or setting of the women's movement in order to give life to the ideas, expectations, and pitfalls encountered by the advocates of women's health: the making of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" (1973); the conflicts surrounding the training and practice of women's pelvic exams; the emergence of abortion as a feminist issue; the battles over contraceptive regulation at the 1983 Depo-Provera FDA hearings; and the rise of the profession of midwifery. Including an epilogue that considers the experiences of the daughters of 1970s feminists, "Bodies of Knowledge" is an important contribution to the study of the bodies – that marked the lives – of feminism's second wave.

About the Author

Wendy Kline is associate professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of "Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom".

Reviews

"'Bodies of Knowledge' is a much-needed addition to scholarship on the women's health movement, feminist historiography, and the history of medicine, making it appeal widely to students and teachers in these fields, as well as activists still engaged with trying to transform the health care system" – Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College

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