To 'Better the Breed of Men

Women and eugenics in New Zealand, 1900-1935

Bibliographic Data

ID4851852
AuthorsAngela Wanhalla (0000-0003-0882-7072, Otago Polytechnic, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume16
Issue2
Pages163-182
Publication date2007-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWomen s History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09612020601048779
OpenAlexW2071556344
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Over the past decade the relationship between feminism and eugenics has become an increasingly important site of research. This relationship, however, remains to be examined in New Zealand. This article interrogates the ways in which female reformers, colonial feminists and female health and welfare workers engaged in eugenic debates in New Zealand during the first three decades of the twentieth century. It situates the 1924 Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders in New Zealand and the sterilization debate of the 1930s as representative of women’s role as both the agents and subjects of eugenics in this period. Eugenics offered women a discourse of moral and social reform that fitted neatly with the ideals of colonial feminism and, by extension, enabled them to participate in national debates about racial health. However, in their testimony before the 1924 Inquiry and in the subsequent debates surrounding sterilization, women articulated and prescribed eugenic solutions for ‘deviant women’ and cast themselves as the ‘mothers of the race’. As authors of eugenics for other women, white middle‐class female reformers, health professionals and colonial feminists complicate the history of eugenics in New Zealand

Colonialism · Eugenics · Feminism · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Medical History and Research

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