Aging women as sexual beings. Expertise between the 1950s and 1970s in state socialist Czechoslovakia

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F21%3A00122143" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/21:00122143 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1081602X.2021.1955723" target="_blank" >https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1081602X.2021.1955723</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2021.1955723" target="_blank" >10.1080/1081602X.2021.1955723</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Aging women as sexual beings. Expertise between the 1950s and 1970s in state socialist Czechoslovakia

Original language description

The paper examines the changes during state socialism in Czechoslovakia in the understanding of the post-reproductive sexuality of women, focusing on the network of medical experts and shifts in expertise, which gave rise to a ‘new kind of person’: sexually active climacteric women. Analyzing the medical press, we show how Czechoslovak experts moved from an exclusive focus on women of reproductive age toward seeing climacteric women first in connection with their working capacities and gynecological health, and over time more as sexual beings. We trace the changes in the broader societal discourse and the shifts in (primarily gynecological) expertise that facilitated a gradual rejection of the stereotypical image of ‘fading’ women and made the emergence of sexually active climacteric women possible. Moreover, we highlight the role of transnational knowledge circulation. We demonstrate how expertise was transformed after Czechoslovak experts became acquainted with the work of the US sexologists Masters and Johnson in the second half of the 1960s. As the systems of knowledge realigned, expertise shifted toward emphasizing the existence and importance of sexual pleasure for (post-)climacteric women. Pointing to similar developments in neighboring countries, we highlight the importance of comparative approaches to state-socialist sexualities.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50403 - Social topics (Women´s and gender studies; Social issues; Family studies; Social work)

Project

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Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

History of the Family

ISSN

1081-602X

e-ISSN

1873-5398

Volume of the periodical

26

Issue of the periodical within the volume

4

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

21

Pages from-to

562-582

UT code for WoS article

000684419400001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85112345886