Our Bodies, Ourselves

Our Bodies, Ourselves, American book on women’s health, first published in 1970 and followed by eight revised and updated editions, with the last appearing in 2011. It was a groundbreaking publication in its expressed goal of dispelling widespread ignorance about the female body and women’s health issues. Noting the often dismissive and sometimes injurious treatment women can receive from male-dominated medical institutions, the book emphasizes the importance to women of knowledge about their own bodies, and it encourages their active participation in medical treatment as well as alternative treatments. Each chapter contains an extensive list of resources.

The book’s authors were members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, which began as a small feminist discussion group in the late 1960s. To supplement scant or unavailable information about women’s health and medical issues, the group began writing articles on topics such as sexuality, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, and menopause, incorporating personal experiences with their research findings. At first calling themselves the Doctor’s Group, in 1970 they published their collected papers as a 193-page course booklet, Women and Their Bodies. It was then retitled Our Bodies, Ourselves and published as a book by the New England Free Press in 1971. The small imprint, however, was unable to keep up with demand, and two years later the first commercial edition of the book, which had been expanded, appeared. Part health manual, part do-it-yourself instructions, and part feminist manifesto, the book quickly became a best seller. At the time, neither oral contraceptives nor abortions were universally legally permitted, and the chapters addressing these subjects were among the reasons that the book was regarded as revolutionary.

Subsequent editions were heavily revised and expanded with chapters discussing issues such as body image, physical fitness, lesbianism, aging, AIDS, new reproductive technologies, and violence against women. In addition, information by and for women of colour was included. Our Bodies, Ourselves was translated and adapted into some 30 languages, usually in conjunction with women’s health organizations in other countries.

In 2018 the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, which since 2002 had done business as Our Bodies Ourselves, announced that, for financial reasons, it would not produce more editions of the book; the final edition had appeared in 2011. Instead, the group intended to focus its activities on advocating for women’s health and for social justice. Our Bodies, Ourselves was one of the 88 books chosen by the U.S. Library of Congress for its 2012 exhibition “Books That Shaped America.”