News at the Centre for the History of Medicine
"Low Risk Doesn't Mean No Risk": The Making of Lesbian Safer-Sex and the Creation of New (S)experts in the Late Twentieth Century
We are happy to announce that 'The Cultural History of the NHS' project continues to bear fruit!
Dr Hannah Elizabeth, one of our postdoctoral Fellows, has just published their chapter, '“Low Risk Doesn’t Mean No Risk”: The Making of Lesbian Safer-Sex and the Creation of New (S)experts in the Late Twentieth Century' (open access here), an exciting piece of work informed by and begun during their time with us here at CHM!
Dr Elizabeth is now a Fellow on Dr Rebecca Wright's fantastic Wellcome Trust funded Project Carbon Bodies: Warmth and Fuelling Health in Britain, 1918 to 2022 at the University of Northumbria.
The Mizo Discovery of the British Raj: Empire and Religion in Northeast India, 1890-1920
Congratulations to former CHM PhD student, Dr Kyle Jackson (2017), whose amazing doctoral dissertation (supervised by David Hardiman and Roberta Bivins) has just been published by Cambridge University Press. Order a copy here
Another great read for the CHM shelves!
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.