History of Medicine in Eastern Europe: Sexual Medicine and Women’s Reproductive Health in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary

Lišková, Kateřina

doi:10.1163/26667711-78010029

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Feminist scholarship has already shown that there were distinct periods of reproductive politics and gender in state socialism (eg, Lišková 2021; Varsa and Szikra 2020). In Czechoslovakia, the period between 1948 and 1965 was marked by such changes as an increase in women’s employment, the transition to the dual earner family and legal access to abortion.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Input from experts was applied to the kinds of policy issues that were problematic but did not threaten the existing political order or leaders (Hilevych and Sato 2018). Medical experts held a prominent position in these debates (see also Lišková 2021).…”

Section: Reproduction In State-socialism As a ‘Collective Interest’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the late 1950s, economies throughout the Soviet bloc stagnated, and fertility declined more quickly than in the West. The socialist countries then started to apply pronatalist measures (Lišková 2021; Hilevych and Sato 2018; Klich-Kluczewska 2017; Varsa 2021a). In Czechoslovakia, the State Population Committee was established in 1957.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia

Dudová

Hašková

2023

Med Humanities

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The article analyses medical communication in popular media relating to the risks in reproduction in the state-socialist Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989 and shows how it used emotions as an instrument to control women’s reproductive behaviour. In particular, we use an approach inspired by Donati’s (1992) political discourse analysis and by Snow and Bedford’s (1988) framing analysis to explore communication on the risk of infertility in the abortion debate, the risk of fetal abnormalities in the prenatal screening debate, and the risk of emotional deprivation and morbidity in infants in the debate on mothering practices. The analysis contributes to the knowledge on how the construction of risk in reproduction, including childcare, serves to create a moral order of motherhood by defining what constitutes ‘irresponsible’ reproductive behaviours and their associated risks, and in doing so may lead to the further marginalisation of already marginalised people. We explain how expert discourse on reproduction and care aimed at the general public worked by constructing risks, a fear of these risks, and women’s responsibility for avoiding them in order to regulate women’s behaviour through self-discipline, which worked alongside other disciplinary techniques. These techniques were applied unequally and mainly to marginalised groups of women, such as women of Roma ethnicity and single mothers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reproduction In State-socialism As a ‘Collective Interest’mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia

Dudová

Hašková

2023

Med Humanities

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“…45 Current research has started to stress the connection between the history of the family, sexuality, medicine, and gender in Eastern Europe, but focusses primarily on the post-World War II period. 46 There seems to be a gap in research with regard to national strife in the post-World War I multi-ethnic states perceiving themselves as nation-states. Hence, this special issue sees one important trigger and characteristic of the nationally colored discourses on abortion and family concepts in multi-ethnicity, since their respective public spheres could be described as conflicting ethno-spaces.…”

Section: The Concept and Focus Of The Special Issue "Birth Control As...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Birth Control as a National Challenge: Nationalizing Concepts of Families in Eastern Europe, 1914–1939

Hein-Kircher

Hiemer

2023

Journal of Family History

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Providing the conceptional framework of the special issue and discussing its main hypotheses, the introductory article points out that extraordinary vivid discourses on birth control in journalism emerged during East Central Europe's interwar period. They fought for more liberal attitudes towards birth control, but were combined with a peculiar emphasis on the nation, since they were more intensively colored by and integrated in nationalizing discourses. Thus, they became an essential part of the question of how the society should like, so that they were only partly a reflection of female self-empowerment. Thus, birth control as a core method of family planning at that time had become an issue of national survival.

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“…Posledním aspektem diskuse, který považujeme za dobré zmínit, je její historické pozadí. Oblast ženského reprodukčního zdraví byla v období socializmu silně normativně regulována a rozhodování o ženských tělech bylo plně a nezpochybnitelně v kompetenci zdravotních expertů [Lišková 2021]. V Česku je tedy třeba počítat se silnou tradicí důvěry v lékaře a jeho expertní řešení, a naopak s velmi slabým konceptem volby v kontextu zdravotní péče.…”

Section: Kontext Diskuse O (Domácích) Porodechunclassified

The Czech Home Birth Controversy as an Example of the Activation of the Civil Sphere: Jeffrey Alexander's Concept of Societalisation

Hejzlarová¹,

Durnová²

2022

Czech Sociological Review

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The article analyses the public dispute over homebirths in Czechia over the past two decades using the concept of 'societalisation'. Drawing on a wealth of empirical material, including media outputs, court proceedings, changes in legislation, expert opinions, and other supplementary materials, the article examines the homebirth dispute on the legislative, judicial, and public policy levels and in relation to the media and experts. The analysis structures the evolution of the dispute into five phases that reflect the evolution of the homebirth issue from the perspective of civil sphere dynamics. One of the key moments in the societalisation process 'code-switching'. In the Czech homebirth context, code-switching occurs when homebirth ceases to be presented in the media solely as a health-care problem, articulated dominantly by doctors as the experts in this field, and it becomes a dispute over human rights and the right to choose as central values of a liberal-democratic political establishment. The concept of societalisation can be used to present a coherent story of the homebirth dispute while maintaining the complexity of the issue and highlighting the civil sphere's important activating role.

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History of Medicine in Eastern Europe: Sexual Medicine and Women’s Reproductive Health in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary

Cited by 6 publications

References 1 publication

Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia

Obedient mothers, healthy children: communication on the risks of reproduction in state-socialist Czechoslovakia

Birth Control as a National Challenge: Nationalizing Concepts of Families in Eastern Europe, 1914–1939

The Czech Home Birth Controversy as an Example of the Activation of the Civil Sphere: Jeffrey Alexander's Concept of Societalisation

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