Regulating WomanhoodCarol Smart This collection of original essays looks at a topic of growing interest and debate in feminist and historical circles: the social regulation of women through law during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the resistance which emerged in response. The collection refutes the notion of women oppressed during the 19th century, unable to act in opposition to the law. When issues of motherhood and women's sexuality became areas of public policy, women began to negotiate the law, as case studies from Europe and the USA show. This book should be of interest to students of women's studies, sociology of law, and social policy. |
Contents
Feminist vigilantes of lateVictorian England | |
Child sexual abuse and the regulation of women Variations on a theme | |
Women and latenineteenthcentury social work | |
Producers of legitimacy Homes for unmarried mothers in the 1950s | |
Representing childhood The multiple fathers of the Dionne quintuplets | |
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adoption adultery age of consent argued assault baby became behaviour Blatz Bosanquet brothels campaigns Chant Chapter child protection child sexual abuse citizenship claims concern construction Contagious Diseases Acts court Criminal Law debates Dionne quintuplets discourse divorce dominant double standard Dr Dafoe England family law father fatherhood female feminism feminist gender girls Helen Bosanquet Hill’s husband idea illegitimacy individual infanticide issue Josephine Butler Journal legislation London magistrates male marriage married men’s middle-class monogamy moral panic natural nineteenth century NSPCC Octavia Hill offence Oliva Dionne Ontario organisation parents paternity patriarchal police political Poor Law practice problem prosecute prostitution punishment Quints quintuplets regulation relations Report reproduction responsibility sexual difference social purity social workers society specific theory Toronto unmarried motherhood unmarried mothers Victorian Vigilance Record violence welfare wife wife’s wifebeating Wilson wives woman working-class women