Women, Race & Class

The birth control movement began with the 19th-century idea of “voluntary motherhood.” Although Davis believes that reproductive rights like birth control and abortion are a “fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women” (202), she criticizes the movement’s racist history. Davis discusses the birth control movement extensively in Chapter 12 to discuss eugenics’ influence on the movement, which included sterilization abuse and later hamstrung the abortion rights campaign with respect to the participation of women of color and working-class women. Davis faults birth control advocates and abortion rights leaders for not understanding the concerns of these groups of women.

“Bourgeois ideology,” as referenced by Davis throughout the book, and the “bourgeoisie class” are both terms associated with the socialist critique of capitalism and its ideology. Karl Marx defines the bourgeoisie as the middle-class capitalists who owned the means of production. Davis refers to Northern industrial capitalists, especially those associated with the Republican Party of the 19th century, as the “Northern bourgeoisie” (74). Davis also uses the term to refer to capitalist interests and ideology, which she heavily criticizes for its “racist ingredients” (121). Ultimately, Davis argues that middle-class women’s internalization of this ideology (even as it disadvantaged them in certain ways) was the reason suffragists like Susan B. Anthony often failed to understand the concerns of working-class and Black women.

An economic system in which private individuals or entities (as opposed to the state) own and control property for profit. To Davis, capitalism and the “profit-motive’s reign” was a historically “oppressive system” even during its early stages; in advanced capitalist societies of modern day, it continues to contribute to oppression not only along class lines, but also along lines of race, sex, etc. Early in the book, Davis outlines the development of industrial capitalism and the resulting decline in women’s social status. She later connects capitalism in modern society with ongoing racism and sexism. For example, she identifies the rape crisis of the 1970s as part of the “deep and ongoing crisis of capitalism” (201). Davis envisions the defeat of capitalism as a strategy to combat historical injustices, including sexism and racism.

This movement began in the late 19th century and gained popularity in the early decades of the 20th century based on “pseudo-scientific racial theories” about which members of the human population should reproduce and which should not (213). Davis discusses racism’s influence on the eugenics movement in the context of both the suffrage movement and the birth control movement. She particularly laments the eugenics movement “destroy[ing] the progressive potential” of the birth control movement through its involvement in compulsory sterilization laws; these led to the sterilization of many women, mostly poor or women of color, deemed “unfit” to reproduce, thus safeguarding white supremacy. Davis also notes the support the movement received from monopoly capitalists.

Davis uses this term most often in reference to the results of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in which President Lincoln declared enslaved people to be free. Davis often puts quotation marks around the term (or related terms like “free” or “freedom”) to indicate that formerly enslaved peoples, despite legal emancipation, were not truly emancipated post-slavery due to continuing social, economic, and political oppression. She also uses the term synonymously with “liberation” in other contexts, such as when referring to achieving “women’s emancipation.”

Davis describes this term in context of its development during and after industrialization, when the word “‘Woman’ became synonymous in the prevailing propaganda with ‘mother’ and ‘housewife,’ and both ‘mother’ and ‘housewife’ bore the fatal mark of inferiority” (12). Davis notes, however, that the idea of the “‘housewife’ reflected a partial reality, for she was really a symbol of the economic prosperity enjoyed by the emerging middle classes” (229). To Davis, the 19th-century ideology of womanhood and the closely related term “housewife” were exclusive to white middle-class women because neither Black nor working-class women were exempted from labor or able to be full-time wives and mothers.

This term refers to actions or policies that extend one nation’s economic and/or political power over another territory, land, or country. Davis first introduces this term in the second half of the book while discussing the rise of racism at the end of the 19th century and its influence on the suffrage movement. She supplies further historical context by noting US imperialist expansion into the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. She argues that the “same forces that sought to subjugate the peoples of these countries were responsible for the worsening plight of Black people and the entire US working class” (117).a

Davis heavily discusses industrialization in the context of its effect on white, middle-class women in the United States. Industrialization shifted many domestic tasks women had traditionally performed at home to the factory, thereby “rob[bing] many white women of the experience of performing productive labor” (12)—labor that had also ensured women a measure of respect as part of the home-based economy. As Davis explains, the “by-product” of this was the redefinition of femininity and of women’s roles as belonging in the home as housewives and mothers, stamping them with a mark of inferiority. Of course, many of the jobs women had traditionally done—e.g., making clothes—continued to be done by women, but these jobs were now fully integrated into the capitalist economy. The working-class women employed in the new factory system had much less freedom than prior generations working within their own homes had enjoyed.

This term refers to the era after the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s and spanning approximately the next century. During this period, many former slave states adopted laws legalizing racial segregation. The era was also marked by continued racism and violence toward Black people, including lynchings and voter disenfranchisement. Davis references Jim Crow laws to supply historical context throughout the book, noting, for example, that the Jim Crow era “drastically diminished Black people’s educational opportunities” in Chapter 6 (109).

A violent act, typically carried out by mobs, that involved the public killing of individuals, often by hanging. After the Civil War, white people lynched Black people as a means of terror, especially in the 19th and 20th-century South. Davis extensively discusses the work of anti-lynching crusaders, particularly Ida B. Wells. She also provides a historical overview of the use of lynching, noting that during the era of slavery the act primarily targeted white abolitionists, but after enslaved people were freed, lynching became focused on Black people. Its justification changed over time, ultimately landing on false rape charges against Black men, even though, as Davis notes, most lynchings relied on other justifications.

An accusation and theory that developed in response to the falling birth rate among white women in the midst of the growing birth control movement: It argued that white women who intentionally had fewer children were committing “race suicide.” Such arguments, rooted in racism, became prevalent and even made their way into speeches by President Theodore Roosevelt. Davis highlights this argument to show the acceptance of racism among the suffrage movement and birth control advocates. The counterpart to the race suicide idea was the argument that Black Americans, immigrants, and working-class people needed to embrace birth control to counteract falling birth rates among middle-class white people.

The era after the Civil war and the emancipation of formerly enslaved peoples, Reconstruction is commonly associated with the years 1865-1877, when, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, there was a focus on bringing Southern states back into the Union. Davis also refers to the “Radical Reconstruction” era as an era of “unparalleled progress” for Black people that included representation in government, the establishment of Black colleges and universities, and significant progress in education that also benefited poor white people (85). The progress of this era was later reversed by the Jim Crow era, which was a racist response to Reconstruction.

Sterilization is a form of birth control that involves a surgical procedure that permanently prevents pregnancy. Davis refers to involuntary sterilization as “a racist form of mass ‘birth control’” (204). In Chapter 12, Davis particularly calls out the sterilization abuse of Black women and other women of color and identifies it as an ongoing issue as of the 1970s. She contextualizes forced sterilization within the racist history of the birth control movement, which—under the influence of eugenics theory—involuntarily sterilized “unfit” women (that is, poor, immigrant, and Black women). Davis also discusses sterilization in the context of the 1970s abortion rights campaign, with abortion activists seemingly unable to understand the reluctance of many women of color to join the campaign given the movement’s controversial history. By outlining this history, Davis again brings attention to the multiple factors affecting Black or working-class women in their oppression.