Women Confined

Plot

The focus of Women Confined is on the social and medical treatment of women as childbearers. Ann Oakley argues that a particular feminine paradigm of women has been embedded in the practice and pronouncements of the medical and psychiatric professionas on he subject of women and reproduction: the same stereotype has also dominated academic psychology and sociology. Women have not been seen as human beings, but as people whose bodies and minds are programmed for childbearing. COnsequently, their reactions to birth and motherhood - their adjestment or depression - have been attributed to their femininity rather than to their humanity.