School of Social and Political Science

Description

Join Professor Maud Bracke to explore the paper investigating the French state's attempts at illegally introducing contraception in the overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the mid-1960s, and the responses by a range of local actors. French officials' plans at introducing contraception in the Antilles before the legalisation of 1967 were largely unsuccessful, but they uniquely shed light on the racialised anti-natalism that underpinned French governance in the overseas departments, contrasting sharply with post-war pro-natalism in metropolitan France. 

The paper places the introduction of contraception in the Antilles-  officially after 1967 and governed by a distinct legal framework from 1972 - in the context of wider anti-natalist measures, involving a weaker system of family welfare compared to the mainland,  and state-managed emigration. It analyses expert and government discourses on 'soaring demography', fertility, and family formation in the overseas departments, and explores the ambivalent responses by local family planning organisations, who were keen to make contraception widely available but cognisant of the demographic rather than rights- or health-centred motivations behind these policies. This analysis is the first to combine state archives with publications by Antillean family planning organisations (CEDIF in Martinique and La Maternite Consciente in Guadeloupe) and personal memoirs.  

Maud Bracke is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Glasgow and is a historian specialising in the social, gender and political history of 20th Century Europe.  

Read more about Prof Bracke here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/maudbracke/#researchinterests 

This is a seminar organised by the Histories of Gender and Sexuality Research Group, co-badged by GENDER.ED.

Registration is not necessary to attend.