Birth Control and the Rights of Women

After the granting of the vote to women in 1918, the struggle for womens rights intensified with a nationwide campaign for the right to birth control. This campaign was met with a great deal of hostility; it threatened to overturn Victorian ideas about female sexuality, female empowerment and the traditional roles within the family. The most well known of the campaigners, scientist and early feminist Marie Stopes, opened clinics across England which fitted contraception caps to women for free. The first history of this grassroots social movement, After the Suffragettes offers a window into the social and cultural history of the period, and features new archival material in the forms of memoirs, personal papers and press cuttings. This is an essential contribution to the influential field of womens history and a vital addition to the history of feminism.

After the granting of the vote to women in 1918, the struggle for women's rights intensified with a nationwide campaign for the right to birth control. This campaign was met with a great deal of hostility; it threatened to overturn Victorian ideas about female sexuality, female empowerment and the traditional roles within the family. The most well known of the campaigners, scientist and early feminist Marie Stopes, opened clinics across England which fitted 'contraception caps' to women for free. The first history of this grassroots social movement, After the Suffragettes offers a window into the social and cultural history of the period, and features new archival material in the forms of memoirs, personal papers and press cuttings. This is an essential contribution to the influential field of women's history and a vital addition to the history of feminism.

Autorentext
Clare Debenham recently gained a PhD in Politics at Manchester University, where she is currently Lecturer in Politics.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Rediscovering the Post-suffrage Birth Control Campaign 2. The Emergence of the Birth Control Movement 3. Birth Control- a Feminist Issue? 4. Anatomy of the Birth Control Clinics 5.Challenging the Opposition 6. Shifting Ideologies: Birth Controllers, Feminists, the Malthusian League and Eugenics Society 7. Working the Political Parties 8. The End of the Campaign? Appendix: Collective Biography of Birth Control Activists Notes Bibliography Index