The Women's Health Vacuum (Some Sunday Context)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Trump administration is targeting health and scientific research -- often based on whether it includes keywods like "women." This presents the risk that a science vacuum will emerge, which could take years or decades to unwind.

Today, as part of our "Some Sunday Context" series, we go back to a moment when there was a huge dearth of research and information about women's health -- and grassroots efforts to fix it.

In Boston, in 1969, a group of women got together to share information about women’s health, which would eventually lead to writing a 193-page pamphlet, which would eventually lead to the book “Our Bodies, Our Selves.”

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why women felt the need to share this basic information about their health, the book’s influence over the generations, and whether it’s still needed today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, Jody Avergan here. Welcome to our Some Sunday context series. On Sundays, we are bringing you
0:08.5	episodes that feel like they may provide a little context or historical perspective for life today
0:14.1	here in the first year of the second Trump administration. Today, an episode from the archives
0:20.3	about an effort to gather and disseminate
0:22.7	information about women's health. Our bodies, ourselves, was an incredibly influential
0:27.7	pamphlet from the early 70s that provided women, often for the first time, with a sense that
0:33.1	women's health was something that merited its own research and literature and understanding. It came to
0:39.4	be because there was a vacuum in the scientific research and the public conversation.
0:44.6	I'm thinking of this now because, well, that vacuum might be getting opened back up as the Trump
0:50.1	administration targets all sorts of health and science research, in some cases crudely going
0:55.2	after stuff that simply mentions women as one of the focus areas of research. This is all out of
1:00.8	some, I don't know, some idea that paying attention to women counts as DEI or something. I don't
1:05.7	know. It's really dumb. It's dumb, but it's not without real consequences. Research is being pulled. Studies are cut
1:12.1	short. It's still to be seen if we are going to be plunged back into the darkness, the period
1:17.4	described in this episode where there was a desperate need to fill the research and information
1:21.8	gap, but it sure feels like it's a possibility that we are headed back to that kind of era.
1:27.0	So, with that in mind, here is our episode about our bodies ourselves,
1:31.0	and we will see you soon with more new shows.
1:37.4	Hello and welcome to This Day in Esoteric Political History from Radiotopia.
1:41.7	My name is Jody Avergan.
1:45.6	This day, May 5th, 1969, a group of women in Boston are preparing to meet at what was
1:52.6	dubbed a female liberation conference at Emanuel College. In a workshop called Women and
	...

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