In response to "Women and Obstetrics..."
First of all, I think you should look at the problem within the proper context. The time period, the 19th century, is the biggest problem. If you have not, you should read a book by Helen Longino called "Science as a social knowledge." In this book, she shows that science is not a purely objective field, but it is subject to contemporary trends, philosophies, etc. During that particular time in history, there was a lot of research on measuring intelligence. Many of the doctors who were doing the research had already decided that all other races were inferior to caucasions and that "women are just as stupid as blacks or children." They orginized data so that they could prove their hypotheses and dismissed others who contradicted them by saying that the other had already made up his mind about the situation and was just fitting the data for his own purpose. If you want to know more about this, read Stephen Jay Gould's "The mismeasure of man."
Point one: cultural bias affects scientific reasoning.
Secondly, these doctors who believed in the inferiority of women had no idea that women's bodies were much different than men's. I see that you are a STC major and have probably already read about some of the incredibly stupid things that male doctors said about women (periods were a disease, a woman's menstrual cycle assures that she cannot reason and is no better at controling her emotions than an animal, etc.). Anyway, this period began the first quasi-scientific (I say quasi because through history, medicine has been the least scientific of all fields of human knowledge. You would think that since health is so important people would have done a better job of finding safe, effective tratments and cures.)study of women's bodies. Of course they made mistakes. It's inevitable in a new field. They had to learn not just in what ways a woman's body is different from a man, but how a woman's body works. It takes experimentation and a lot of data. The only reason we know what radiation does to the human body or how much it can take is because we dropped two bombs on Japan. That and a few minor accidents supplied necessary, but unfortunately gained, data.
Finally, I'd like to show you the fruits of their labor. Of course more is known now about women because there are women doing the research. There is one point I'd like to make about these evil, unfeeling bastard who "raped" women's bodies in the name of science. If you look at how the average life expectancy of women and men have changed over the years, you will see something interesting. Men used to live considerably longer than women, but in the late 19th century women began to catch up, and in the early 20th century, women surpassed men in life expectancy (although the numbers are getting closer now because more women smoke). The major reason for this change is that women now are (well I should say it happens rarely) not dying during child birth. Why? Because child birth now takes place under supervision of a doctor who can step in and attempt to save both mother and child, using all of the tools of modern technology. That is something that you cannot get from a midwife. It is a shame though that doctors insist on using the tables which they do. There are better positions for a woman to be when she is in labor than on her back with her feet in the air. Maybe procedure will change someday.
There is one thing which I would like to ask you. In your paper you kept saying that men wanted "control." That is a word I've heard many women, both hard line feminists and others, use about men. Where did this come from. Can you point me to any literature, studies, or anything that will show me how much of a control freak I am. So far, I haven't been able to see it myself. I'm wondering if it's just an excuse, a way for women to point the finger at men one more time, to blame them for all of women's problems.
I left out a few points which you might want to consider in your analysis.
Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century Darwin proposed his theory of evolution and natural selection. Now, racism became easier to justify. Since we didn't all come from Adam and Eve, caucasians could have evolved from a better set of monkeys. Women didn't come from a spare rib, but social darwinism did as much as it could to keep women down.
Perhaps if we go to the root of the problem, see where it all started, we could understand who is to blame. Women became surpressed with the beginnings of the "sky cults." It is clearly a Judeo-Christian idea that women are inferior. For thousands of years people have been trying to escape the manacles of those doctrines. The belief in God almighty has really slowed human intellectual and social progress. Perhaps in a future time when the church doesn't have so much control over the minds, the ethics and values of people, when a former president will not get away with saying, "America is a christian nation," everyone will receive their proper respect. (are you Jewish? Your name sounds Jewish.)
Humankind's origional sin is the lopsided dominance of reason over intuition.