Following British officials’ recommendation to stop prescribing oral contraceptives linked to blood clots, US Senator Gaylord Nelson began collecting testimony from experts in 1970. He asked: Is the pill safe? Do women have enough information to make informed decisions? Histories of the pill and the women’s health movement remember these hearings as initiating the “pill scares” and resulting in the first insert for patients.
Most memorable, however, are the allegations of sexist underrepresentation of women among the experts. Feminists from D.C. Women’s Liberation protested the hearings because no women testified in the first round. The senators dismissed these “disturbances” and suggested feminists were prejudicing their own case. By the end, only 4 women (of 36 experts) had appeared, none of whom were regular users. Historians have agreed that Nelson refused women patients’ the platform to speak, and some have further charged that that those women who did testify were uncritically “pro-pill.”
While there is truth to these claims, they overshadow how gender norms about expertise shaped the testimony of the women who did testify. In this flashtalk, I will argue for the unique contributions of women as experts, such as providing gender-blind expertise, gender-based testimony as an expert-user, and gender-based criticism. Furthermore, I will explore how these gender norms excluded certain testimony, such as non-expert users, “emotive” appeals, and those “aggressive” disturbances. Primary sources include women’s testimony from the Nelson hearings and articles from the feminist publication off our backs.
