Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the influence of oral contraceptives on ideas and discourses on female sexuality in the US, Britain and Germany during the 1960s-70s, and discusses possible differences with case of Poland, where the circulation of the pill was low and abortion was the main family planning method

Paper long abstract:

Contraceptive pill, first introduced in the US in the 1960, is one of the drugs by far most studied from a gender perspective. From the late 1990s, American, British and German historians of science and medicine have published on the history of this drug in the US and some European countries, analysing with a gender approach different aspects of its introduction, circulation, reception and use. They also underlined how the pill, as a drug taken by women independently of the sexual act, contributed to transforming the patterns of female sexuality.

However, almost no research has been done by far regarding the introduction of the pill in non-democratic regimes, such as communist Poland. In contrast to Spain, where the right-wing dictatorship banned selling, advertising and publicly exposing contraceptives between 1941 and 1978, in Poland in the same period there was no legal prohibition to sell or use contraceptives, and abortion was legalised in 1956. The pill was introduced in Poland in the late 1960s, but, for different reasons, the consumption of contraceptives in general, and the pill in particular, was very low.

In this paper, I will look at how the pill influenced during the 1960s and the 1970s the changing ideas and discourses about sexuality in the US and some other European countries. Further, I will formulate questions on how these patterns may relate to contraceptive practices in Poland, shaped by the scarce circulation of the pill and relatively wide practice of abortion during the period under discussion.