Gynecologists and Women Workers’ (Reproductive) Health in Post-War Poland, 1950s-1960s

• In Event: Reproductive Mobilizations and Interventions in State Socialist and Early Democratic Poland, 1950s-1990s

Abstract

From the early 1950s, female gynecologists conducted large-scale research on the health of women working in the textile industry in Łódź in central Poland. Interested primarily in reproductive health, gynecologists investigated the impact of industrial labor on menstruation and pregnancy. They asked about reasons for women’s absenteeism at work. In this paper, based on published and archival sources, I analyze these studies, focusing on the arguments on women’s work they shaped. I will show how medical experts conducted the studies and concluded that women’s health (including reproductive health) was not endangered by work in the industry. Instead, experts discovered that women’s poor health was caused by external factors such as housework or housework combined with industrial work. In the 1960s, this research in reproductive health led to more interdisciplinary and holistic expertise on women’s work, both in and outside the home. The paper draws attention to the role of women medical doctors in shaping expert discourses on women’s work. The expertise they produced undermined the widespread opinion that biological conditions were decisive for women’s performance at work.

Author

• Natalia Jarska, Institute of History, PAS (Poland)