Article ID: CBB998240820

No Man’s Land? Gendering Contraception in Family Planning Advice Literature in State-Socialist Poland (1950s–1980s) (2020)

unapi

This article examines popular medical discourses on contraception produced in state-socialist Poland following the legalisation of abortion in 1956, a time when the party state declared family planning to be a public health project. By analysing popular medical literature, I argue that the popularisation of family planning constructed and relied on gender norms that could ease anxieties about the mainstreaming of ideas relating to sexuality and contraception, as well as about gender equality in a state-socialist context. I show that the femininity constructed in Polish birth control advice was based in fertility and the physical attractiveness required to maintain a husband’s sexual interest. Although masculinity was represented as distant, egoistic and violent, experts broadcast mixed messages about the effectiveness and usefulness of popular male contraceptive methods, some of which were at times utterly demonised.

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Authors & Contributors
Sharman Levinson
Heo, Na Sil
Lin, Yi-Tang
Klein, Viola
Susanne Schmidt
Barmpouti, Alexandra
Concepts
Family planning
Birth control; contraception; sterilization
Masculinity
Public health
Femininity
Sexuality
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
Medieval
21st century
20th century, early
Places
United States
France
South Korea
Poland
Greece
Germany
Institutions
Population Council
World Health Organization (WHO)
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