Contraceptive consumers: gender and the political economy of birth control in the 1930s

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1996 by Andrea Tone

By 1938, only twelve years after Holland-Randos had launched the female contraceptive industry in the United States, at least four hundred other firms were competing in the lucrative market.(32) The $212 million industry acquired most of its profits from the sale of jellies, suppositories, tablets, and antiseptic douching solutions retailed over the counter as feminine hygiene and bought principally by women. Historians of birth control, attentive to the findings of medical studies in the 1930s, have rightly emphasized the rising popularity of diaphragms at this time, especially among urban, middle-class women. Progressive physicians and public clinics consistently endorsed combined diaphragm and jelly use as the safest and most effective female-controlled contraception available. But as important as increased diaphragm use was to the medicalization of birth control, its surging popularity was incidental to the escalating profitability of the industry itself. The contraceptive industry thrived in the 1930s precisely because, while capitalizing on public discussions of birth control to which the medical community contributed, it operated outside customary medical channels. Manufacturers supplied women with something that clinics and private physicians did not: birth control that was conveniently located, discretely obtained, and, most importantly, affordably priced. While the going rate for a diaphragm and a companion tube of jelly ranged from four to six dollars, a dollar purchased a dozen suppositories, ten foaming tablets, or, most alluring of all, up to three douching units, depending on the brand. Contraceptive manufacturers pledged, furthermore, that customer satisfaction would not be sacrificed on the altar of frugality. They reassured buyers that bargain-priced contraceptives were just as reliable as other methods. Without lay guides to help them identify the disjunction between advertising hyperbole and reality, women could hardly be faulted for taking the cheaper path. By the late 1930s, purchases of diaphragms accounted for less than one percent of total contraceptive sales.(33)

Manufacturers' grandiose claims aside, not all contraceptives were created alike. The dangers and deficiencies of birth control products were well known in the health and hygiene community. Concerned pharmacists, physicians, and birth-control advocates routinely reviewed and condemned commercial preparations. Experts agreed, for instance, that vaginal suppositories, among the most frequently used contraceptives, were also among the least reliable. Suppositories typically consisted of boric acid and/or quinine, ingredients not recognized as effective spermicides. Melting point variability posed an added problem. Suppositories, usually based in cocoa butter or gelatin, were supposed to dissolve at room temperature. In practice, weather extremes and corresponding fluctuations in vaginal temperature made suppositories' diffusion, homogeneity, and contraceptive attributes unpredictable. The "protection" given by foaming tablets was no better. Comprising an effervescent, moisture-activated mixture such as tartaric acid and sodium bicarbonate (which, when triggered, produced a protective foam), tablets often remained inert until after male ejaculation.(34)