Genevieve Schweitzer - Gender, Health, and the Law
Genevieve is a master’s student at the Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs, studying human rights law with a concentration on gender. She is researching global restrictions on sexuality education with Human Rights Watch and Sciences Po Law School.
Area of Concentration Courses
Sociology 115 - Sociology of Health and Medicine
Legal Studies 190 - Feminist Social Movements
Gender and Women's Studies 129 - Bodies and Boundaries
Legal Studies 159 - Law & Sexuality
American Studies 101 - The Music of 1971
Thesis
Birthing Choice: Midwifery in 1970s Counterculture and Feminism
Many different social movements bubbled to the forefront of American society in the 1960s and 1970s, as activists challenged existing structures of law, politics, and cultural norms. Among this upheaval, the hippie and second wave feminist coalitions emerged as prominent figures. These two streams of social activism have often been studied as distinct, with separate goals and conflicting visions of women’s roles. However, both hippies and second wave feminists of the 1970s shared an important cause: home midwifery. A growing number of women began to give birth at home with midwives in this period, influenced by both feminist and countercultural critiques of hospital birthing practices. This paper narrows in on the case study of the Farm, Tennessee, a hippie commune at the epicenter of the home midwifery revival. Hippie women on the Farm taught themselves about childbirth and shared their learnings in the popular book Spiritual Midwifery. Through a comprehensive dive into Farm midwifery, hippie rhetoric, and second wave feminist theory about childbirth and motherhood, this paper examines the diversions, intersections, and shared goals between the hippie and feminist movements of the 1970s. Hippie midwifery on the Farm was not overtly associated with second wave feminism, and at times, promoted very traditional notions of womanhood. However, countercultural resources about midwifery ultimately contributed to feminism’s subversion of mainstream gender norms, by educating women about their bodies and centering their stories. As nuanced and complex as the hippie home midwifery revival was, it overall intersected with a long-term feminist effort to support women’s empowerment and reproductive choice – particularly in the rural South. This paper therefore engages in social movement theory efforts to consider how different social movements intersect and overlap. It also challenges the notion that hippie women were the apolitical, unempowered counterparts to second wave feminists, through the study of shared advocacy efforts for home midwifery
