Women's Health Activism and Agency: At the Intersections of Sexuality, Race, and Class

In our papers, we address how different notions of gender and sexuality came to shape how women throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries understood notions of sexual health and reproduction and their ability to access public services in the United States. Our panelists showcase women’s determination to take control of their own bodies, whether by challenging the “conspiracy of silence” about White women’s sexuality in the 1920s, centering collective care in Latina communities in the 1960s and 1970s, or organizing to protest and prevent work and/or marriage requirements for public health services for welfare recipients in the 1960s and 1970s. In doing so, women from a variety of backgrounds rejected patriarchy, racism, and heteronormativity and asserted their own agency.