1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910820158203321

Autore

Kline Wendy <1968->

Titolo

Bodies of knowledge : sexuality, reproduction, and women's health in the second wave / / Wendy Kline

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago ; ; London, : University of Chicago Press, 2010

ISBN

1-282-89472-2

9786612894725

0-226-44307-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (218 p.)

Disciplina

306.7082/09045

Soggetti

Women - Sexual behavior

Women's health services

Reproductive health

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Body Knowledge -- 1. Transforming Knowledge: The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves -- 2. Reexamining the Pelvic: The Pelvic Instruction Controversy of the 1970's -- 3. Learning from the Uterus Out: Abortion and Women's Health Activism in Chicago -- 4. Bodies of Evidence: Depo-Provera and the Public Board of Inquiry -- 5. Choices in Childbirth: A Modern Midwife's Tale -- Epilogue: Daughters of Feminism -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Throughout the 1970's and '80's, 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 1970's feminists, Bodies of Knowledge is an important contribution to the study of the bodies-that marked the lives-of feminism's second wave.