News at the Centre for the History of Medicine
'...the law is illogical and unjust’: The Problems with the Infanticide Act 1922
Dr Kelly-Ann Couzens latest blog from the 'Last Taboo of Motherhood' project explores the problems with the Infanticide Act 1922 and discussions with the medico-legal community about potential reform to the legislation.
'Women and Mental Illness in Post-War Britain' Workshop Summary
An in-person workshop was held on 13-14 April 2023 at the University of Warwick, co-organised by Fabiola Creed and Hilary Marland.
Generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Centre for the History of Medicine at Warwick and Warwick’s Global Research Priority Health, and prompted by our Wellcome funded project ‘The Last Taboo of Motherhood’, this workshop explored changes in understanding, diagnosing and responding to women’s mental illnesses in post-Second World War Britain.
Read a summary of the workshop here.Link opens in a new window
Improving Maternity Care through Women’s Voices: The Women’s Health Strategy Continues a Long Process of Advocacy
Congratulations to Dr Fabiola Creed and Professor Hilary Marland for the publication of their policy paper in the online journal History & Policy.
The article explores the role of women’s voices in shaping maternity care during the twentieth century and you can read it in full here.
Executive Summary
- Effective maternity care has been hampered by limited service provision and inadequate funding throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
- Pronatalist policies dominated maternity care in the first half of the twentieth century, moving to a growing consumer-led emphasis in the post-war period.
- Historical events – war, the creation of the National Health Service, the hospitalisation and medicalisation of childbirth, and the feminist health movement – led to fundamental changes in maternity services and care.
- After 1900, women became vocal in expressing their aims for improved maternity care, and their ambitions were most effective when they dovetailed with pronatalist goals.
- Following the expansion of mass media, education, and employment for women since the 1960s, both women’s organisations and individuals developed greater confidence in their campaigns for change and in urging policy makers and health services to listen.
- Descriptions of their own experiences from women of all social circumstances and ethnicities can be converted into powerful tools for lobbying policy makers and government and for raising recognition of postnatal mental illness.