We often hear about feminism and how this movement changed the history of the world by allowing women to gain equal rights as men. However, we rarely hear about how the same movement changed in the way women were treated in hospitals and clinics all over the world.
While there is more work to be done, women today have access to high-quality medical care, and there were groundbreaking advances made in the healthcare of women. Plus, even though many of the healthcare services we have access to today seem like common sense, a quick glance back in history will paint a different picture.
So let’s have a look at how healthcare designed for women advanced in the last 100 years or so.
Women’s Healthcare between 1901 and 1950
In the early 1900s, women didn’t have options when it came to their reproductive rights. There was no way to plan a pregnancy (other than abstinence), which often forced women into staying at home and raising the children.
However, things changed once Margaret Sanger, a nurse, and writer at the time opened her first birth control clinic. Her work helped pave the path for later movements supported by women and can be seen as the foundation stone for feminism since women now had a choice. Margaret Sanger is now celebrated as a sex educator and America’s most famous advocate for birth control.
The clinic Margaret Sanger opened has evolved into what today is Planned Parenthood, a network of clinics known to provide reproductive healthcare to women in need.
The 1920s came with another impressive invention – the pap smear, invented by Georgios Papanikolaou in 1923. According to the CDC, the pap smear test helped reduce mortality rates due to cervical cancer in the US by 81% once the test was recognized by the medical community (which only happened in 1943).
Another medical advancement strictly connected to women’s health care is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which helps women deal with the symptoms often associated with menopause.
From the 1950s until the 2000s
If the first half of the 20th century was all about piercing the ice in women’s healthcare, the second half was all about new discoveries and medical breakthroughs that helped more women live healthy and fulfilling lives.
Between 1950 and 1960, there was registered one of the steepest declines in maternal mortality rates due to the legalization of induced abortion and the use of aseptic techniques during childbirth Plus, the introduction of antibiotics helped keep women healthy even when the childbirth required more complex procedures.
In 1965, birth control became legal for married couples after the FDA deemed the birth control pill safe. However, unmarried couples had to wait until 1972 to be able to purchase birth control pills legally.
Furthermore, the first mammogram machine was built in 1966, which paved the way for discovering early signs of breast cancer. Of course, nowadays, we have more data and better-equipped machines to detect different types of cancers women might face.
The 1980s brought a breath of fresh air into the field of women’s healthcare due to the inclusion of women in government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid. This program was expanded to cover pregnancies, and later on, it made screening and treatment for breast and cervical cancer more accessible.
Lastly, starting in 1993, when the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act was passed, clinical research for new drugs had to include both males and females. Up until that point, women were mostly excluded from benign subjects of medical research. With this new act, drugs now had to consider the side effects for both genders.
Where Are We Today?
The 20th century was truly amazing for the healthcare of women (and medicine, in general), but this doesn’t mean it managed to solve all the problems. Luckily, technology and medicine advance at a much faster pace nowadays, so even though we’re only 20 years into the 21st century, we’re already seeing impressive progress.
Sure, there are setbacks as well, but overall, healthcare for women is more accessible and affordable now than it used to be 20, 70, or 120 years back.