Gender, Sex, and Medicine in Post-War Europe : Beyond Binaries

This open access book demonstrates that thinking ‘beyond binaries’ in its many forms - capitalist/socialist, men/women, interwar/post-war, east/west, normality/pathology - allows for new insights and understandings of how the intersections between medicine, gender, and sex shaped common ideas, policies, and experiences across post-war Europe. These intersections encompass gendered health discrimination, regional disparities in health outcomes, access to abortion and contraception, eugenics and racism, sex and relationship education, and the medicalisation of LGBTQIA+ identities. Each have continued to significantly influence government policies, medical practices, individual lives, and scientific ideas across Europe. The book therefore engages with important histories related to contemporary debates about reproductive rights, medical ethics, and health legislation.

Gender, Sex, and Medicine in Post-War Europe brings together scholars working across disciplines and regions in both East and West Europe to shed light on how gender norms and expressions of sexuality permeated health practices, scientific ideas, medical law, and policymaking across ideological and geographical divides. As such, the volume’s contributions enhance our understanding of both individual and collective medical experiences across post-war Europe and the complex relations between doctors, patients, scientists, and law makers.

By examining gender, sex, and medicine in the post-war period, this book fosters new scholarly perspectives on Europe as a continent that, to an extent, overcame the socio-political realities of the Cold War period and shared common ground through parallel experiences, policies, ideals, and beliefs.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.