PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

transformed’ between 1960 and 2000. 5 A society that was ‘homogenous, conformist,
masculist, egalitarian and monocultural, subject to heavy formal and informal
regulation’ in 1960, had become by 2000, ‘one of the least regulated societies in the
world, economically even more than socially’. 6 People felt empowered by the
knowledge they had gained and often were keen to learn more, especially about issues
such as immunisation which affected themselves or their families. Much of this
process was well underway by the 1980s with the growth of the women’s health
movement and the focus on informed consent.
The Impact of Women’s Liberation
During the 1960s a ‘second wave’ of feminism emerged in the United States from the
civil rights movement and anti-war demonstrations centred on the war in Vietnam. 7
‘Women there, “fighting to free other peoples, found themselves relegated to making
tea, typing and providing sexual comforts for men…”’ 8 In western countries such as
Britain, Australia and the United States, groups of women began a consciousness-
raising process designed to challenge and re-invent a woman’s role in society.
In the United States by 1969, ‘radical activism was transforming the political
landscape’. 9 Beginning with the civil rights movement in 1955 this spawned,
amongst others, Black Power, the American Indian Movement and women’s
liberation. In terms of health awareness, the formation of the Boston Women’s Health
Book Collective at the end of the 1960s and the publication of their book, Our Bodies,
Ourselves, ‘changed the landscape of women’s health care in the United States and
throughout the world’. 10 Eight women, discovering their lack of knowledge regarding
the workings of their own bodies, set out to rectify this. The research papers they
produced on a range of women’s health topics were first presented in workshops and
then went on to form part of the 1970 publication Women and their Bodies later
5 ibid., p.463.
6 ibid.
7 First wave feminism emerged 1885-1905 in New Zealand. It was during this period that New
Zealand women were given the vote (1893). A more militant suffrage movement in Britain during the
same period did not achieve the vote until 1918 for women over 30 and 1927 for women over 21.
8 M. King, The Penguin History of New Zealand, p.461.
9 S. Morgen, Into Our Own Hands. The Women’s Health Movement in the United States, 1969-1990,
New Brunswick, 2002, p.3. Sandra Morgen is the director of the Centre for the Study of Women in
Society at the University of Oregon.
10 S. Morgen, Into Our Own Hands, p.5.
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