“Expertise and Experience in the Greek Feminist Birth Control Movement, 1974-1986”

My research investigates the production and circulation of knowledge about abortion and contraception in the Greek feminist birth control movement (1974-1986), demonstrating how the Greek feminists adopted and modified the aims and practices of the international feminist movement. As participants in a “boundary movement” that operated both inside and outside academia, women and feminists blurred the lines between scientific and experiential expertise. Exposing the difficulty of conceptualizing experiential expertise, I draw upon the work of feminist scholar Sara Ahmed. She coined the term “sweaty concept” to describe the intellectual labor needed to give the concept meaning. I argue that we can only understand the concept of birth control within the co-production of gender, experience, and expertise.