For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women

This women's history classic brilliantly exposed the constraints imposed on women in the name of science and exposes the myths used to control them. Since the the nineteenth century, professionals have been invoking scientific expertise to prescribe what women should do for their own good. Among the expertsâ€™ diagnoses and remedies: menstruation was an illness requiring seclusion; pregnancy, a disabling condition; and higher education, a threat to long-term health of the uterus. From clitoridectomies to tame womenâ€™s behavior in the nineteenth century to the censure of a generation of mothers as castrators in the 1950s, doctors have not hesitated to intervene in womenâ€™s sexual, emotional, and maternal lives. Even domesticity, the most popular prescription for a safe environment for woman, spawned legions of â€œscientificâ€ experts.
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Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English has never lost faith in science itself, butinsist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides todayâ€™s readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.
Country USA
Manufacturer Anchor
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-10-02
Format Kindle eBook

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