March is Women’s History Month, and we here at UC Press are proud to share our rich record of publishing stories of women from throughout history, between disciplines, and across borders. Please enjoy these collections which highlight the many roles women have played from the ancient world to today, from the arts to global studies, from Asia to Africa, and beyond, proving that women’s legacies are inextricable from every detail of our past and vital to the shape of our future.
How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics
From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump
by Laura Briggs
“This engaging book covers feminist theory and how it views a divergence of issues since the 1970s. Excellent for collections on feminism, current affairs, and American politics.”—Choice
Today all politics are reproductive politics, argues esteemed feminist critic Laura Briggs. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction. Households are where we face our economic realities as social safety nets get cut and wages decline. Briggs brilliantly outlines how politicians’ racist accounts of reproduction—stories of Black “welfare queens” and Latina “breeding machines”—were the leading wedge in the government and business disinvestment in families. This crisis, argues Briggs, fuels all others—from immigration to gay marriage, anti-feminism to the rise of the Tea Party.
Reproductive Justice
An Introduction
by Loretta Ross & Rickie Solinger
“Controlling reproduction and the bodies of women seems to be the first step in every hierarchy. That’s why reproductive justice—women having power over our own bodies—is the crucial first step toward any democracy, any human rights, and any justice.” —Gloria Steinem
Written by two legendary scholar-activists, Reproductive Justice introduces students to an intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender politics. Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger put the lives and lived experience of women of color at the center of the book and use a human rights analysis to show how the discussion around reproductive justice differs significantly from the pro-choice/anti-abortion debates that have long dominated the headlines and mainstream political conflict. In a period in which women’s reproductive lives are imperiled, Reproductive Justice provides an essential guide to understanding and mobilizing around women’s human rights in the twenty-first century.
The Zero Trimester
Pre-Pregnancy Care and the Politics of Reproductive Risk
by Miranda R. Waggoner
“A sophisticated study not only of a new medical trend, but also of a contemporary result of a century-old construction of modern pregnancy, modern motherhood and women’s health care.”—Social History of Medicine
The Zero Trimester explores why the task of perfecting pregnancies now takes up a woman’s entire reproductive life, from menarche to menopause. Miranda R. Waggoner shows how the zero trimester rose alongside shifts in medical and public health priorities, contentious reproductive politics, and the changing realities of women’s lives in the twenty-first century. Waggoner argues that the emergence of the zero trimester is not simply related to medical and health concerns; it also reflects the power of culture and social ideologies to shape both population health imperatives and women’s bodily experiences.
Taking Baby Steps
How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception
by Jody Lyneé Madeira
“Madeira’s mixed-method research approach has yielded in-depth material on how people make decisions under stress about their treatment, as well as revealing overarching themes regarding the patient-physician relationship and the attitudes and behaviors of women and couples as they undergo assisted reproduction. It also provides essential insights concerning the informed consent process.”—Genetics and Society
In Taking Baby Steps, Jody Lyneé Madeira takes readers inside the infertility experience, from dealing with infertility-related emotions to forming treatment relationships with medical professionals and confronting difficult medical decisions. Based on hundreds of interviews, this book investigates how women, men, and medical professionals negotiate infertility’s rocky terrain to create life and build families—a journey across personal, medical, legal, and ethical minefields that can test mental and physical health, friendships and marriages, spirituality, and financial security.
