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Eva-Maria Silies

Eva-Maria Silies

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract Eva-Maria Silies

german version

The introduction and normalisation of the Pill in the FRG caused a change in talking about sexuality and sexual behaviour. Contraception was a sensitive and emotional issue, and it was discussed in public only hesitantly and bashfully. The sharing of such experience between women - in age cohorts and in intergenerational relations - was apparently a key to the transmission of knowledge and practices concerning the Pill. This seems to make the women of the Sixties and early Seventies into a "silent generation", the privacy of contraception set them apart from the "Generation of '68". But in the Seventies a more critical attitude towards the Pill emerged. Many women claimed that the side effects were a risk to women's health. Even if the fear of getting pregnant was gone, many women now had the feeling that they always had to be available for sex and still could not live out their "female sexual liberty".

In the project, the generational making of a fundamental female experience will be analysed on the basis of female narratives and ego-documents. By regarding different age cohorts and women with different backgrounds the project aims to identify a generational transition in the sharing of bodily knowledge within the peer group and the handing down of moral standards from mothers to daughters. This seems to be essential to understand the public debate about the Pill and, more generally, the social mores and the dynamics of changes in the Sixties and Seventies.