On the evening of April 17, 1956, thirty-three-year-old Helen O. visited nurse Mamie Cadden at 17 Hume Street, Dublin, for […]
Church Discipline and Miscarriage Mismanagement at Catholic Hospitals
Quick — is your nearest hospital affiliated with the Catholic Church? This is a question I would not have been […]
Meanings and Materials of Miscarriage: How Babies in Jars Shaped Modern Pregnancy
In 1866, a young man in Crestline, Ohio, visited Dr. J. Stolz to ask the physician for help. Mr. B’s […]
Seeking Health and Doing Harm: Gender Bias, Medical Sexism, and Women’s Encounters with Modern Medicine
A 2011 survey completed by faculty at forty-four medical schools in the United States and Canada indicated that 70% of […]
Golden Girls, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the Legacies of Hysteria
On September 23, 1989, the fifth season of Golden Girls opened with a two-episode arc entitled “Sick and Tired.”1 The […]
I’m Not Crazy!: Abby Norman’s Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain
I was diagnosed with endometriosis when I had my first laparoscopy at 14. I’m very lucky. I got my period […]
Gender, Health, & Marginalization: National Responses to HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and Jamaica
After conducting Fulbright research on the cultural politics of HIV/AIDS in Jamaican women’s lives, I became interested in exploring how […]
Women’s Health Advocacy at Work
I realized belatedly that writing a biography of a women’s health activist as my dissertation (and wrestling with the late […]
A Midwife for Every Woman: Maternal Healthcare in Malawi
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa, with 50% of its population living in poverty. A landlocked country […]
“A Basic Issue of Women’s Liberation”: The Feminist Campaign to Legalize Contraception in 1970s Ireland
On May 22, 1971, forty-seven members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) boarded the 8am train from Dublin to […]
