Birth Control and the Rights of Women: Post-Suffrage Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century

(Hardback)

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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, Birth Control and the Rights of Women 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.

Reviews

'This account of birth control and feminism is the result of many years work. It is packed with fascinating details that will intrigue and inform readers familiar with the birth control campaigners as well as those discovering them for the first time' Sheila Rowbotham, socialist feminist historian and the author of Dreamers of a New Day: The Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century

Author Bio

Clare Debenham is a tutor in the Department of Politics at Manchester University.