L
LemonAndLime
Guest
The contraceptive pill has been called the greatest scientific invention of the 20th Century by some commentators. Arriving at a moment of social and political upheaval, it is now 50 years since it was made available on the NHS. But what impact has this tiny pill really had? In 1961, women’s lives were very different. Often married at an early age, most women were expected to stay at home and raise an expanding family while men went out to work. Nowadays, women can choose to have children, further education and a career on their own terms. The pill was instrumental in changing that.
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When introduced on the NHS, the pill was prescribed mainly to older women who already had children and did not want any more. The government at the time did not want to be seen to be encouraging promiscuity or “free love”. Although there were not any restrictions on its use, the take-up of GPs prescribing it was slow. That all changed in 1974 when family planning clinics were allowed to prescribe single women with the pill - a controversial decision at the time.
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It has also affected women who were never “on the pill”, say economists George Akerlof, Janet Yellen and Michael Katz. They say “courtship” used to involve an implied promise that if a woman became pregnant, the man would marry her, but as women were now able to control when they had children, the implied promise disappeared. For women, the pill meant marriage became harder to come by. They wrote in a study on the effects of the pill: “The pill encouraged the delay of marriage through routes such as reducing the necessity of marrying to have sex and lowering the incidence of shotgun marriages.” Jane Falkingham, the director of ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC), agrees that the pill was part of a social change that separated partnerships and children.
For young women, its impact is mainly on their lifestyle, however studies have shown that as women age, those who have taken the pill for 10 to 15 years are less likely to get cancer of the womb or ovaries.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15984258
Link to article about the cancer risk - news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6987889.stm
…
When introduced on the NHS, the pill was prescribed mainly to older women who already had children and did not want any more. The government at the time did not want to be seen to be encouraging promiscuity or “free love”. Although there were not any restrictions on its use, the take-up of GPs prescribing it was slow. That all changed in 1974 when family planning clinics were allowed to prescribe single women with the pill - a controversial decision at the time.
…
It has also affected women who were never “on the pill”, say economists George Akerlof, Janet Yellen and Michael Katz. They say “courtship” used to involve an implied promise that if a woman became pregnant, the man would marry her, but as women were now able to control when they had children, the implied promise disappeared. For women, the pill meant marriage became harder to come by. They wrote in a study on the effects of the pill: “The pill encouraged the delay of marriage through routes such as reducing the necessity of marrying to have sex and lowering the incidence of shotgun marriages.” Jane Falkingham, the director of ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC), agrees that the pill was part of a social change that separated partnerships and children.
For young women, its impact is mainly on their lifestyle, however studies have shown that as women age, those who have taken the pill for 10 to 15 years are less likely to get cancer of the womb or ovaries.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15984258
Link to article about the cancer risk - news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6987889.stm
