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In this chapter we look at women's health issues: Some herstory |
12..WOMEN AND MADNESS CONFERENCE We finish with an international campaign |
1...BACKGROUND - WOMEN IN HEALING
Bon Hull: ' When community healers, who were predominantly women, were persecuted and executed in their millions during the religious frenzies of the Middle Ages, medicine was taken out of the hands of the people. Always with an eye economic rewards, through the following centuries, it became common practice for the sons of rich merchants to dabble in medicine at the universities which were being established. As women were excluded from these 'seats of learning', medicine came to see itself as a male discipline and still defines itself as such. Its attitude today is as patriarchal towards its women members as to the women who seek its help. ... Medical men and women who are critical of the elitism and power of their profession are seen as radical mischief-makers and are quickly promoted, demoted, or eased out to less controversial areas of work ... What the patient needs or thinks is seldom given consideration in the highly structured hospital system.
- Medicalisation (medical control) of every normal life process has created a dollar bonanza of healthcare today.
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Childbirth has become an expensive illness instead of a warm, human experience. ...
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Menstruation difficulties are treated with drugs, surgery or psychotherapy ...
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Menopause is spoken of as an a\illness and the widespread use of drugs prescribed by doctors encourages women to think of it as such.
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Old age has become a period of medicalisation; many otherwise healthy but physically handicapped people are defined as sick.' Bon Hull In Our Own Hands : A Women's Health Manual Hyland House 1980
Herstory: 'When anaesthetics (Chloroform) began to be used in medicine in the 19th century the Church decreed it would be against God's will for its use in childbirth. 'In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children' says Genesis, and as part of Eve's punishment it was right and proper - in fact essential - that women should suffer when giving birth. A most unlikely lady decided this was nonsense and was rendered blissfully unconscious for the birth of her ninth child - Queen Victoria! In Australia feminists worked to take some control.' University of Melbourne
2...IN AUSTRALIA - THE HOSPITAL RUN BY WOMEN FOR WOMEN
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years: 'On September 1896 ... Dr Constance Stone called a meeting of medical women to discuss the establishment of a hospital which would provide free medical and surgical treatment by qualified medical practitioners, for women and children in poor and distressed circumstances.
The inaugural meeting consisted of ten women: Drs Constance and Clare Stone and their cousin Mary Page Stone, Lilian Alexander, Amy Castilla, Freda Gamble, Janet Lindsay Greig and her sister Jane Greig, Bertha Main, and Helen Sexton'. 'Her experience at the mission (Dr Singleton's Clinic) convinced Dr Stone that work awaited women doctors as great as their strength could compass ... The hospital was to be called the Victoria House. The name of the colony was chosen because the service was distinct from any other, and was to be for everyone, from town or country, who could devise the means to use it - the only treatment for general diseases offered to women by women themselves.'
In 1896 'Victoria Hospital for women was started by Dr Constance Stone in small church hall in Melbourne (Welsh Church).' p 13 Taking Time A women's Historical Data Kit compiled and edited by Yvonne Smith, Union of Australian Women
Vashti's Voice 74/75: (The Victoria Hospital) opened at the Welsh Church in Latrobe Street (1896) where Dr Constance Stone's husband was a cleric, "to offer women and children in poor distressed circumstances the opportunity of obtaining medical and surgical treatment by qualified medical practitioners." p9
320 Latrobe Street, Melbourne
Women came in droves from all over Victoria. Special travelling concession trips were organised in wagons from different country areas. Children accompanied their mothers, and country women appreciated the opportunity to talk with other women as they waited to see their doctor.
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years: 'My friend told me how kind you were and that you only just saved her, so I came at once as soon as I knew.' One old country woman had been to all and sundry, but she had heard someone say that 'the ladies were better than the Chinese'. A quack told her that she had a worm that was reaching her heart, and she had traced a line all up her body with a finger none too clean; she was convinced this was a worm. The doctor ordered liquid soap, asked the dispenser to put a poison label on it, and advised two or three applications with warm water; the woman was exultant then the 'worm' disappeared. She spread the fame of the 'Ladies' throughout her district and many came down on the next excursion train.' 'Treatment was free or as much as you could afford. For the first time women were given ante-natal advice checked regularly before birth and were able to discuss problems frankly with a doctor of their own sex.
The women put into this plate any coin they could spare to cover the cost of medicine, but the money was sometimes used to cure starvation.' 'In the first three months, doctors interviewed 605 women. The lack of beds for inpatients hampered their work, though, as many women needing surgery or hospitalisation had to go back to their homes in the country without treatment, and urgent operations were done in people's homes if they lived in town, with only the most essential facilities.'
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years: 'The women looked to the hospital as their own in a touching and generous way. Gifts of flowers and fruit were brought for the doctors, and many a present of the patients' work, to show how personal they felt the advice and sympathy of the staff ... These were the days of depression after the boom had burst, of sweated labour hidden in homes, of the first of the Factory Acts not yet carried out in practice, a great disillusion of the hope of prosperity come to a people unorganised and unprepared. "What did you have for breakfast?" asked the doctor. "The usual" came the reply - and this indefinite answer hid a poverty of starvation. One woman offered her coin, but was told to take it back to buy a meal. She wept at the goodness of the doctors; her life was spent finishing men's trousers at 2/9 a dozen.'
A larger hospital with inpatient facilities was needed and Queen Victoria had expressed her personal wish that all funds raised for her diamond jubilee should be used for the welfare of women and children.
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years:'It was decided that a lay committee was essential to administer funds and get the interest of the public. Members of the suffrage movement determined to organise a committee, including other ladies and gentlemen. Mrs Crawford and Mrs Goldstein (senior) of of suffrage movement and a well known journalist Mr Champion, and Dr Constance Stone were the nucleus of a meeting which decided to "commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria" by establishing a hospital that had facilities for inpatients.'
Vashti's Voice 74/75: 'Much of the finance was to come from a Women's Shilling Fund, ... (which was) closely organised and implemented through the Women's Christian Temperence Union and suffrage committees.'
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years: 'Objections to the Queen Victoria Hospital Shilling Fund came from many quarters ... There was opposition form the medical profession and the establishment, such as Janet Lady Clarke (foundation member of the Australian Women's National League, which opposed the women's movement), who supported an infectious diseases hospital (instead of the Queen Victoria Hospital) for the Queen's Jubilee celebrations.
"Argus 5th March 1897: 'Sir, In your issue of 19th Ultimo there is an interesting article by "Ida" on the Diamond Jubilee Memorial. May I be permitted to say a few words in support of the subject she advocates (The Queen Victoria Hospital Shilling Fund). It seems a great pity that the two hospitals under discussion should be looked upon as rivals, namely the QVH, which was actually started about six months ago and the Infectious Diseases Hospital, which Lady Clarke, and, I am sure, all that think about it, are so anxious to start. Both are so good, both are so necessary, and surely in generous Victoria, particularly at a time of Jubilee, it is possible that both shall be firmly established. If one has a prior claim it seems to me that it is the one which has already made a beginning ..."
5...'THIS MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN?'
The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years: '... The patients caught the spirit of the community and adopted the hospital as their own, as they had done at St David's Hall. One of them, who noticed that the nurses had to leave the ward to see the time, made a 6d levy and purchased a clock as soon as she was well.' 'In March 1900 the first dispenser resigned: Miss Wollen, now Mrs Alice Henry, was appointed and remained until 1905. ... Miss Wollen was the first woman to enter the college ... received a gold medal for the annual exams. She served her apprenticeship with her father but Miss Stoddart, the next woman to qualify, could find no chemist to accept her. Miss Wollen, who had been the only dispenser for over two years and who had lived at the hospital in case of emergency calls, gladly received her as apprentice.' p23 The Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital The First 50 Years from Bon Hull papers Melbourne University
Bon Hull papers Melbourne University archives
The Queen Victoria Hospital prevailed as the hospital run by women for women until 1956 when three men were appointed to the Resident Medical Staff. It was then difficult to distinguish it from the Women's Hospital. In 1963 male patients were admitted. It was then difficult to distinguish it from other teaching hospitals.
The Hospital System later -
Vashti's Voice 74/75: 'We still have a hospital system that is reactionary, in the hands of professional elites, bogged down in tradition and to some extent reliant on the good will companies ... who "donate" beds or wards ...' Bon Hull papers, University of Melbourne archives
Zelda D'Aprano: 'The ward resembled Myers Bargain Basement; a young woman was brought in during the evening, the blood was flowing from her body and there was a great deal of running about and emergency treatment by the nursing staff and doctora. All of the patients woke up, despite the sleeping pills dispensed to all, how could we sleep, when within each of us we knew that a woman's life was at stake. We were all silent and our thoughts were with our sister.
What can a woman say that would be fitting to describe the attention, care and concern shown to us by the nursing staff. It is impossible for me to put into words what and how I feel towards them. One thought comes through all of the suffering witnessed, no woman should have to undergo this suffering alone ... For men to just turn up at visiting hours and see the woman lying in the beds as if they are free from pain and discomfort is to release men from any responsibility towards women and our specific problems.
By coincidence, whilst here, I am reading Freedom for Priscilla, which resulted from research done by the author into the history of the Queen Victoria Hospital. What a struggle our earlier women doctors went through to establish the right to operate when necessary. All hospitals at the time prevented women doctors from practicing their profession when operations were necessary. But what has happened since then? Yes, women doctors are equal to the best that men have to offer, but is this good enough? It is not men who are having breasts, a uterus and ovaries removed. This is our specific problem and can we be satisfied to have our bodies mutilated by experts in order to survive? If men were losing a testicle as often as a woman is losing a breast, uterus or ovaries, would men be spending countless of millions of dollars sending men to the moon, or constructing telescopes to gaze at the stars? We all know what the answer to that question would be ...
Our medical sisters of the past had such a struggle to assert their rights to practice that they were too busy doing this to question the male medical standards established on women's bodies. Far more research is required and this needs money. Prevention is preferable to surgery. I was surprised at the questions put to me by several migrant women. One woman cried this morning when it was explained to her that her uterus had been removed. She does not understand English. She must have been told prior to the opertion, but she did not know what was involved. She didn't want any more children, but she, like several other women, thought their sexuality would now cease. I patiently explained their fears away.
The need to answer their questions is a vital matter, and one way of overcoming this problem is for women who have undergone these types of operations to be gathered together in the ward and a woman with this knowledge could condust a discussion group to allay any fears the women may have. Sisters, we need so much more money spent on research to do away with our pain and suffering. We must scream more loudly.' Zelda D'Aprano papers University of Melbourne
6...WOMEN'S ACTION COMMITTEE - IN THE BEGINNING
In Our own Hands was written by Bon Hull, Kathie Gleeson and Joan Rowlands.
Zelda D'Aprano: 'Here is the story: The phone calls began in April 1970, when a few women in Melbourne were being interviewed by journalists from the press, radio and TV. As the object of journalism is to sell more newspapers, the interviews were probably published because the women were saying some rather startling things for those days. We were saying,
'Abortion must be a choice available to all women'; 'Every woman should have information and the right to control her own fertility'; 'We are deliberately kept ignorant about how our bodies function'.
Of course we were saying a lot of other controversial things too; about education, jobs, wages, childcare facilities, the family, marriage, and sex exploitation generally. These statements made the journalists more skeptical than usual and they freely added their own comments. Certainly the public response filled up the space allotted for letters to the editor. At that time these media people were all men and they thanked God for their masculinity after every interview, adding their own observation, that it "would all be over in six months".
Zelda D'Aprano: 'But they didn't know about the phone-calls. The phone calls and letters were coming in from women everywhere. The women knew what we were on about. They desperately needed information on abortion, contraception, and the many other things that were affecting their health so badly. And we didn't know the answers!
Answers had to be found, and found fast, for many of these women were desperate. Quickly we had to gather information and pass it on. Off we went to find sympathetic doctors; to talk to nurses we knew; and to read everything we could find. Off to seminars, conferences, into courses to find out how the healthcare system worked; into jobs within the system; calling public meetings to see if what seemed wrong, really was. We found it was much worse.'
What do you know 'my condition', I'm pregnant not sick
8...THE MELBOURNE WOMEN'S HEALTH COLLECTIVE Healthsharing Women Women's Health Activism - stories from the Queen Victoria Hospital to Women's Health Services today book launch - See Appendix 1 Papers
Bon Hull: 'The Melbourne Women's Health Collective (MWHC) grew out of the Women's Abortion Action Campaign (WAAC) just as WAAC grew out of concerned women in the Women's Liberation Movement.' University of Melbourne
MWHC: 'By 1973 the Women's Liberation Movement had become vital and active and out of this awareness of women, the Melbourne Women's Health Collective was born on 12 October 1974. The collective operated on a voluntary basis as an advisory centre for a little more than fourteen months and 3000 women used its services. It opened for three sessions each week; one session each for vaginal infections, contraceptive advice and information and abortion counselling and referral, which seemed to be the area of most need. It closed on 18 December 1975, because the Victorian state government refused registration under the constitution proposed by the collective. ... The whole system had to be changed; and only large scale involvement of both providers and consumers would make it possible to change attitudes and services in this ever-expanding, costly and powerful institution where women patients were at the bottom of the pile.
"We feel there is pressure to streamline women into the 'sick' role by establishing health care systems. We feel there are inadequate services dealing with women's health problems. We believe there are many preventative measures which could be rightly reclaimed from the medical profession. Present medical services often treat symptoms rather than curing the diseases or the causes of the symptoms." University of Melbourne archives
Bon Hull 1975: 'I knew that any changes that were to be made in gaining control of their own bodies, their own fertility, could only be achieved by their own action. The most urgent early contacts to the Women's Liberation Movement in Melbourne were always from desperate women who were unwillingly pregnant. From the very first days this was a reality. And so it was not the movement women who determined that sex-education, contraceptive knowledge and free safe abortion - whether contraceptives failed or not - was to be the strongest stand taken by the Women's Liberation Movement in Melbourne, as it was indeed all over the world. It was the needs and demands of women everywhere in the community, regardless of status or class, that determined our stand. ...
The Melbourne Women's Health Collective feels that is is possible to create a revolution in health care by taking the power out of the hands of an authoritative medical profession, without negating skills, and combining the reality of human experience with abstract learning, transfer the right to control and the right to choose what we do with our own bodies, away from the church, medical establishment and the state, and put it back where it belongs - in the hands of women - our bodies are ourselves.' WAAC paper presented at the Women's Conference, Sydney University 1975 Melbourne University archives
Yvonne Smith: ' First Victorian Women's Health Collective opened at 85 Johnston Street, Collingwood on 11 September. It was a voluntary service, free of cost to all women. Three thousand visits were recorded in fifteen months, during the three weekly sessions which the collective operated. The service ceased 12 December 1975. Funding from the Federal Labor Government was conditional on State Liberal Government funding, whose guidelines would not allow autonomy for the Health Collective and therefore funding was not obtained.
The Rape Crisis Centre and the first Home Birth Group also operated from this address. The Rape Crisis Centre became Women Against Rape and has operated from the Women's Liberation Centre continually since 1979. page 30-31Taking Time A Women's Historical Data Kit Union of Australian Women
9...LEARNING TO SHARE
Ehrenreich & English: 'Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home, and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures. They were called "wise women" by the people, withches and charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.' Witches, Midwives and Nurses: Why a women's health movement
Bon Hull: 'Meantime it seemed a pity to lose all we had learned and are still learning. ... It has been hard, and will be harder still, for those women and men who question the elitism of their profession. There are many who believe that their skills and knowledge should be shared, yet believing this they have to contend with the most conservative and self-regulatory profession of all.' WAAC paper presented at the Women's Conference, Sydney University 1975 Melbourne University archives
Bon Hull: 'We have to realize that the healthcare system is not a benevolent and selfless system set up for the benefit of people. It is a massive institution organised to benefit the providers of the services. Hospitals are concerned that they have a good record of surgical or medical expertise, but they are not generally concerned about the needs of the patient. They are organised to operate, and maintain at all costs, a rigid hierarchical system which is damaging to patients and staff alike.
Hospitals have become the monolithic symbols of an authoritarian healthcare industry: the people who work within it become dehumanised, and those who use it are made to feel inadequate as soon as they enter its doors. ... the present medical and insurance scheme .. has become a financially rewarding industry ... What international corporation considers overseas investment unless the investment can be returned a hundredfold?
... Most people are treated poorly in the healthcare system, but it works particularly against women simply because we are women, and therefore measured by the values of a patriarchal society, which sees us as exploitable in our fertile years and expendable once our reproductive period is past. ... To make changes we cannot wait until we become ill, for then we are vulnerable and weak. The struggle to change the system that deprives any human being of a basic right - the right to the best low-cost caring healthcare, without discrimination - can only be pursued by informed, concerned people in good health.' In Our Own Hands : A Women's Health Manual Hyland House 1980
Zelda D'Aprano:
'We must begin as women to reclaim our land and the most concrete place to begin is with our flesh.'
Cynthia Carson
untitled 1979 Women's Liberation papers Melbourne University archives
11..THE ABORIGINAL HEALTH SERVICE
Accent June 1974 -
Alix McDonald: 'Many Aborigines don't seek medical treatment or leave it too late. Spurred in this belief by a widely reported outbreak of scabies among Victorian Aboriginal children early last year, and by the degree of sickness they found in Aboriginal communities, a group of Aboriginal women formed a committee to set up a special health service. ... The service, which is free, is at 299 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. ... Fitzroy was chosen said the administrator, Mrs Alma Thorpe, because it used to have a sizable Aboriginal population and was still a familiar place ...' Age June 1974
12..WOMEN AND MADNESS CONFERENCE
Melbourne University, August 9th and 10th 1975, organised by Bea Faust; Libby Minifie, Anne Riseborough, Anne Stewart, Ann Jackson, Terry Carney, Dimity Reed. Major topics will include -
- What is madness?
- Housewife neurosis
- Women and drugs
- The 'Power' of therapy
- Feminist theory
- Women and suicide
- Lesbians
- 'I had a dominant mother'
- Menstruation and menopause.
Rose: 'We must learn to stay sane, even if we think we are mad. We need each other's support.' Renee Romeril papers, University of Melbourne
Halfway House Collective paper: 'To change our own heads, to learn to trust our own feelings and perceptions, is a long and painful process. Madness is real to women. Most of us have socially actualised it in our behaviour - we have experiences of psychiatric institutions, alcohol and drug rehabilitation centres. We have disposed of our own intolerable lives through suicide. We have bashed our babies and gashed ourselves. We have all been conned into fearing our various mad nesses and have had to deal with the fear of being discovered and our inability to accept ourselves.
Madness, too, is defined by the system which has oppressed us and prevented us from developing as strong, emotional and independent women. Women must be allowed to define and care for their own sanity. We demand control of our minds as well as our bodies. We will cut the reins which bind our heads and redirect our search towards ourselves, coming to terms with our "madness" rather than being forced to run from it. We will learn to support each other in this process, using our collective strengths to confront the fears and pains of learning to know ourselves. We will need to develop and share our resources to combat the society that attempts to thwart our growth.' 1974-1976 Herstory of the Halfway House, Women's Liberation Halfway House Collective, Melb. Aust. State Library of Victoria
13..HOW THE DOCTOR BECAME CONSUMER
Bon Hull: 'It is estimated that one in every six hospital beds in Australia is occupied by a patient with d drug induced illness ... This sickness, called iatrogenic disease, is a condition brought about by treatment for another diagnosed illness ... By 1980, the estimated annual sales of forty multinational drug companies (which control some 5000 smaller ones) will be worth 50 billion dollars ...'
Many women asked that the information and feelings expressed in this book should be put together. It has been a long but rewarding experience since the feminist Women's Action Committee was first formed back in 1970 - when we were given six months to survive as "just another group of crazy women". But women knew they were not getting what they needed, so set out to find it out for themselves.' Bon Hull In Our Own Hands : A Women's Health Manual Hyland House 1980
A drug used to prevent spontaneous abortion and, paradoxically, given to rape victims as a 'morning after pill' in the 1970's -
Women's Liberation Newsletter September '79: 'The Continuing War Against Women's Control of Our Bodies - Women can be excused if they take a fairly jaundiced view of the publicity which has been given by the media (see the Age 5 and 5 Sept for the use of DES) to prevent miscarriages and the disastrous consequences for the daughters of the women to whom it was given. The Age may have just discovered this piece of information, but feminists have been writing about it for years. In fact letters to the Age were written about the way this drug was used and the fact that daughters of mothers given DES were prone to clear-cell carcinoma of the vagina as long ago as 1973, 4 & 5. Women Against Rape have attacked the use of DES as a "morning-after-pill" routinely given to rape victims in Melbourne for a number of years.' Moore/Danaan papers University of Melbourne
Yvonne Smith: 'The side effects of the use of DES (diethylstilbestrol) came to our notice, and Joan Curlewis asked if I would see what could be done to instigate an action group. It seemed that very many women had been affected through their mothers having been prescribed this drug during pregnancy, for the purpose of preventing miscarriage. It had been found that the incidence of clear cell carcinoma in the daughters of these women had skyrocketed. Adeno-carcinoma was a seldom occurrence prior to 1970, when the daughters reached their teens. Then many displayed symptoms and some died.
It seemed women who had taken DES were also developing a most malignant form of breast cancer. (See IN OUR OWN HANDS, a Women's Health Manual, Hyland House 1980) Although I wasn't affected, I had, like many other women, a couple of abortions earlier in my life and I and other women I know, had been given DES to stop lactation. So I took on this work of getting women who had taken DES together. With UAW resources a luncheon and public meeting were held and many wonderful and active young women got together and formed DES Action, which is still operating, collecting and exchanging information from overseas, keeping women informed. There may still be women out there who have no idea they were exposed to this drug.
Doctors and gynaecologists denied they prescribed it. Some were very well known obstetricians. The women had to really fight to get any details given to them. Some of the mothers were told during their pregnancy that they were given "vitamin pills", some weren't given any information at all. Others were told they were given DES "just in case". Of course, many GP's didn't understand the special way to diagnose the particular type of pre cancerous symptom.
One battle DES Action had was to establish a proper clinic at the Women's Hospital specifically to diagnose and monitor DES caused damage and abnormalities. Marion Vickers did wonderful research and was successful in getting wide television coverage, which resulted in hundreds of women contacting the organisation and being given information and support. There were groups of DES set up right across Australia.' Yvonne Smith, Women's Web Women's Stories, Women's Actions http://womensweb.com.au
DES The wonder drug you should wonder about ... Julia Church 1988 SLV
Yolana Sutherland: 'Toxic Shock - What We Know - On February 14th, along with 140 other women, I attended a meeting to discuss the confusion surrounding what is termed "Toxic Shock Syndrome". Dr Lyn McKenzie was speaking ... We must put pressure on the manufacturers and government, the National Health and Medical Council, and get them to make their report public. As yet, nothing has been sent to doctors, nurses, community health centres or family planning clinics.' Lesbian Newsletter April '80 University of Melbourne
16..1981 NOT NECESSARILY YOUR IDEAL SISTER TYPE? Depo Provera
Bon Hull: 'Depo Provera, What Is It? Depo Provera (DP) is a chemical progestagenic substance called medroxyprogesterone-acetate. Depo means that it is given as an injection - deposited at one site, and repeated every 3 to 6 months as a method of contraception. Medical science does not know how it works or why. ... It has been found to cause breast, and a rare form of uterine cancer in rhesus monkeys. ... Permanent infertility is another effect. ... DP is banned (1981) for use in the US, UK and Canada, except for certain 'selected' women. It is totally banned in India. It is distributed and used with abandon and without choice on women in more than 70 Third World countries.' ...
'Questioned recently on the medical and moral propriety of giving Depo-provera, without choice, to young women passing through Winlaton - some as young as thirteen - Walter Jona, Community Welfare minister said Some of these girls are not necessarily your ideal sister type. (The Age 13/3/81)
And choice is the pivot on which the whole subject of contraception rests. In a society where power is transferred to fewer and fewer hands, to maintain that power information becomes more selective and choices less possible. Restriction of choices brings power and economic benefits to those in positions of power and leaves us economically and politically powerless. There are many examples of this in the world today as people struggle to regain their fright for freedom to choose. But there are more subtle ways to erode freedoms and these are happening right here in our own community.
What happened to the girls Jona wouldn't want for his sisters? ... This program, being conducted on a massive scale included women who are seen as social misfits, those who are poor and deprived, and those whose skin is not white ...
- Like all other countries we have a massive problem with youth unemployment, and we also have what some government departments call an "aboriginal problem". To contain the latter, Aboriginal women have been unknowingly injected with DP for the past 10 years.
- Injecting Migrant Workers - The problem is that the women don't know the risks they are taking because nobody tells ...
The birth control industry is only concerned about population control and profits. It is not concerned with women's health' Bon Hull from Vashti Autumn 1981
Vashti - Private papers
17..1982 WOMEN'S HEALTH RESOURCE COLLECTIVE
Leaflet: 'Meeting since 1982 to discuss and act on health issues affecting women. We believe that women's health issues are poorly dealt with by the medical profession and that this is a reflection on our sexist society.' Women's Liberation archives University of Melbourne
March 1985 Feminist Flier: ' ... There are two main aspects to our current project, employing eight full time workers: the Resource Centre and the Research Project.'
The Women's Health Resource Collective: "What We Think" - The work of the Women's Resource Collective has been shaped by the experiences and views of many women who have contacted us because they feel angry, frustrated, enthusiastic or relieved at what's happened to them. Our concerns about the health care system and its treatment of women are similar to those shared by the international women's health movement. They are not necessarily new concerns and many of them are difficult to tackle, since we are all dependent on the very health care system we wish to change. Our major concern as women is the loss of control we feel in our contact with the health care system. It is men who make the major decisions about our medical treatment, research, what is real or important and how we are viewed as women.
- Aspects of our lives such as childbirth, contraception, menopause and sadness are called 'ill health'; and treated as though they are medical problems, regardless of how we feel about them.
- At the same time the medical profession ignores or trivializes health concerns that are important to us as women, such as vaginal infections, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, pre-menstrual and menstrual problems.
- As users of the health care system we have difficulties obtaining information about our bodies. Some of the ways that limit our ability to maintain control over decisions affecting our health include:
- medical language which is difficult to understand
- information which is withheld or insufficiently explained
- health care which is split up over a range of health providers, leaving us feeling more passive and powerless
- technology which is increasingly sophisticated and is used to strengthen the mystery surrounding medicine so that medical decisions are more difficult to understand or challenge.
We believe we must challenge the ways the medical profession has been empowered to make judgments about the lives of women including the power to decide what is "healthy and normal" for us. We have increasingly lost control over our right to use our own experience to shape our own decisions. This is especially true if we are women who are poor, lesbian, migrant, black, very young or old, or have disabilities.
Decisions about our lives - to give birth, to heal, to choose treatments, must be under our control.' University of Melbourne
Women's Health Resource Collective logo Private Papers
18..1984 REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY
Jocelynne A Scutt: 'At least two-thirds of the world's production is created and performed by women, yet men control production. The world's human reproduction is created and performed almost 100 per cent by women. Yet men, too, aim to control reproduction.' p 10 The Baby Machine Commercialisation of Motherhood ed Jocelynne A Scutt McCulloch Publishing 1988
Reproductive Technology Discussion Wednesday 13 June 1984, Speaker: Robyn Rowland
Age: 'Social psychologist Dr Robyn Rowland has resigned as chairwoman of the research co-ordinating committee of the Queen Victoria Medical Centre in protest at the development of what she describes as "morally reprehensible" reproductive techniques. Dr Rowland also claims that attempts have been made to muzzle her research. The director of the infertility clinic at the Queen Victoria Centre, Prof John Leeton, said he was surprised at Dr Rowland's resignation but preferred not to comment.' Barb Friday papers, Melbourne University
Renate D Klein: 'Robyn Rowland's initial consciousness-raising effect of going public in 1984 was steadily enhanced through the action of other women, including Ramona Koval, science writer and lecturer, writing news and feature stories in The Age and Australian Society, and the Australian FINRET national co-ordinator Lariane Fonseca's almost one-woman effort of producing five newsletters on the NRT's ...' p 260 The Baby Machine Commercialisation of Motherhood ed Jocelynne A Scutt McCulloch Publishing 1988
It is clear that women opposing IVF and embryo research as violence against women's human dignity will have to continue to speak up for themselves, for ourselves. We should offer energetic resistance, prepare our own laws, determine to file legal actions against the technodocs and the pharmacrats, and against the hospitals, clinics, or other institutions in which these experiments and surgical operations are carried out on our bodies ... The least we can do is to expose the techno-patriarchal bias of the new reproductive technologies and genetic engineering, and refuse to enter the dialogue on the terms of the technodocs and the clones. We should not forget that women hold one enormous power: techno-patriarchy still needs access to our bodies to pursue IVF and embryo research. We can capitalise on this power, refuse them access, and organise - infertile and fertile women together or separate - to fight back and resist becoming test tube women.' p 268 - 269 The Baby Machine Commercialisation of Motherhood ed Jocelynne A Scutt McCulloch Publishing 1988
Ramona Koval: 'When we allow a small group of people, who happen to control a university council, to determine the directions that reproductive technologies should take, we hand over our power to a group that is neither representative nor elected by the community. In the absence of any form of structural social control, the pressures for secrecy and commercialisation favour control of reproduction technology by unregulated markets. It is up to us to make the case for an alternative social form of control.
The eugenics ideology manifested within commercialisation of reproductive technologies is a bankrupt ideology because it is ultimately conservative. It preaches that elimination of the poor is the answer to poverty; that elimination of people with disabilities is the answer to a profoundly non-caring society. As the early socialists fought against private ownership and control of the means of production, so must we now examine the ownership and control of the means of reproduction. We must avoid a future we might otherwise regret.' p 132 The Baby Machine Commercialisation of Motherhood ed Jocelynne A Scutt McCulloch Publishing 1988
Jocelynne A Scutt: 'As long as women are used as experimental objects, all women must resist the exploitation of the new technologies and genetic engineering. This resistance must continue and grow, until there is no woman who, in taking her 'role' in any IVF programme, anywhere in the world, is bound to say:
I feel like a baby machine; no one was interested in me as a person. I was just a chook with growing eggs inside - and if they didn't grow properly, then it was my own fault.' p 316 The Baby Machine Commercialisation of Motherhood ed Jocelynne A Scutt McCulloch Publishing 1988
Barbara Hall: 'Women are being used as guinea pigs at a huge cost to their health and wellbeing. Colleagues who underwent IVF showed this, with months off work because of their resulting ill-health.' Conversation 2008
19..BESSIE SMYTH FOUNDATION 1986 Depo Provero Conference
Bessie Smyth Foundation recommendations to Women's Right to Control their Bodies session:
1. Repeal all abortion laws
2. A national ban on the use of Depo Provera
3. Monitoring of all past users of Depo Provera
4. That the National Government should initiate a working party with the women's health movement to look at collection of statistics on abortion, sterilisation and contraception. That the said working party have fair representation of Aboriginal and migrant women and women from the grassroots women's health movement
5. That the National Government should, in particular, initiate research in consultation with the women's health movement into possible complications from the use of the copper 7 Inter Uterine Device
6. National Health and Medical Research Council research grants should be available to grassroot women's health and community groups to search contraception and other areas of women's health.
7. That contraceptive information in all community languages, including comparative risks should be made widely available.
8. That the Federal Government should make a firm commitment to continue to make termination of pregnancy a claimable item on medical benefits schedule. Vashti's Voice University of Melbourne
20..1988 ORANGE ACTION Health Action for Women in Vietnam
Women's Liberation Newsletter No 4 1988: 'At the end of 1986 thirty women from Melbourne visited Vietnam as tourists. During that time they began to realize the extent of devastation and paid that women and children in Vietnam have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of the war. ... The Australian women, too, were moved by the optimism of the women of Vietnam, by the feeling of rebuilding of creativity, of rebirth coming out of the war; sometimes against all odds. They were fortunate enough to be able to meet with members of the Ho Chi Minh Women's Association and were particularly struck with their enthusiasm. At the meeting they talked, amongst other things, of how they could contribute to the struggle of the Vietnamese women ... Thus at the end of April 1987 Orange Action - Health action for women in Vietnam was formed.' Vashti's Voice University of Melbourne
1968 'In flight view of a spray boom ...'
Australian Army Medical Corps crop destruction and defoliation Nui Dat Australian War Memorial
21..WHY DIDN'T 'WICH' EXIST IN THOSE DAYS? Migrant Women
Divna Devic: 'My mother worked in a factory for eleven years, punching holes in both thongs during the off season and only in the left thong during the peak season when extra workers were employed in preparation for the summer onslaught. It was a lonely period in her life, as she sat alone at the machine all day long, punching holes in thongs. The loneliness was broken somewhat during the lunch and tea breaks when she could chat in broken English to women who did not share her language. As she approached menopause, my mother grew worried. One day, obviously desperate, she humbly confided in me, and I, seventeen years old at the time and overwhelmed by her problem, told her she should see a doctor. I might as well have told her she should fly to the moon. Back in our village women found it difficult to talk to doctors, particularly male doctors, about specifically female health problems. Besides this, a person had to be quite ill to go to see a doctor.
Years later I realised how powerless she was in the new society in which she found herself. The little confidence she had in herself she lost in the process of migration. Suburbia, the family which became nuclear on migrating, the new language, financial problems and those blasted thongs all contributed to her sense of powerlessness. Why didn't WICH exist in those days? It would have made such a difference to my mother and to many other women in a similar position.' from Fields, Factories and Feminism Jan 1990
22..1989 WOMEN IN INDUSTRY CONTRACEPTION AND HEALTH (WICH)
Victorian Women's Liberation Newsletter May 1989: 'A migrant women's health organisation. It deals with health issues of concern to migrant working women. WICH receives funding from the Victorian and Federal Governments to carry out a variety of projects.
What Are We Trying to Achieve:
- Make contact with migrant women workers in the industrial context to exchange information on women's health, contraception and occupational health.
- Advocate and pressure for more effective and accessible health and contraceptive services.
- Encourage and support migrant working women to take action on their behalf around health issues.
- Raise the awareness of governments, health organisations, ethnic organisations, the labour movement and the community at large about migrant women's needs.
- Provide a forum for the discussion of all issues relating to health, birth control and migrant women.
Fields, Factories and Feminism Jan 1990
What Do We Do?
- The WICH team of bi-lingual workers visits the factories for discussion and information exchange with migrant women on health and contraceptive issues. Between them the bi-lingual workers speak: Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Polish.
- We develop multi-lingual resources on health and contraception for distribution at the workplace.
- We conduct scientific research projects on health issues identified by migrant women workers as of particular concern.
- WICH takes up issues of concern with the appropriate bodies, such as unions, government and employers.
- We contribute to health and safety policies of unions and relevant government bodies.
- By issuing information, conducting seminars and publicising our activities in the media, WHICH makes efforts to raise public awareness about issues of concern to migrant women.' Victorian Women's Liberation Newsletter No 5 May 1989
In the next chapter we look at abortion.