Norma Meras Swenson

Norma Meras Swenson (born 1932) is an expert in the field of maternal and child health and in reproductive and sexual health rights. Swenson is a founding member of the nonprofit organization Our Bodies, Ourselves, and was a co-author and editor of several editions of the organization's book Our Bodies, Ourselves.

A key part of Swenson's thinking, that "education determines a person's place in life and, through education, we can help break down walls of inequality", was formed during her childhood.

Our Bodies Ourselves

Swenson began, along with 12 other women, to create Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) in 1970. Then known as the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, it took inspiration from a 1969 women's liberation conference. The women shared their experiences surrounding their perception of mistreatment by doctors and their realization of the ignorance about their bodies. Their mission was to offer fellow women more cohesive and non-biased medical information.

The OBOS founders shared their research findings in a 193-page booklet called Women and Their Bodies, which led directly to the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1971. In a 2017 interview with Aging Today, Swenson states the group had been "furious about how many men wrote about women’s bodies or sexuality without knowing much, and we weren’t going to write unless we knew what we were talking about".

Swenson also utilized her knowledge on topics such as sexuality, childbirth, menopause, housing, work, retirement, money, care giving, medical problems, and death to contribute to books such as Ourselves, Growing Older (viewed from the perspective of the older woman in OBOS). The sharing of experiences is a feature of Ourselves, Growing Older as it is in OBOS. In creating the book this way, Swenson and the other authors were able to create an environment that allowed women to find support from other women in the same predicament. Women took comfort in knowing that others shared their problems.

Education

A graduate of Tufts University, Swenson studied medical sociology, and subsequently won a Danforth Foundation Fellowship to work with the critical sociologist Irving Zola at Brandeis University. Swenson earned an M.P.H (Master of Public Health) from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). After receiving her degree, Swenson taught for twenty years at the Harvard School of Public Health. She taught “Women, Health, and Development” from a global perspective in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Departments at HSPH. While at Harvard she served on the HSPH Alumni Council, and is a founding member and former faculty in the concentration on women, gender, and health. Swenson is also an Affiliate of the Women Gender & Sexuality program at Harvard's Faculty of Arts & Sciences, and a member of the group on Reproductive Health and Rights at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

The film, She's Beautiful When She's Angry explains the history of the women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971. The movie moves from the founding of NOW, with women in hats and gloves, to the beginning of more radical groups of women's liberation. "She's Beautiful When She's Angry" articulates the stories of 30 individual women and the Our Bodies Ourselves collective, all of which fought for their own equality and in the process created a revolution. Created by filmmaker Mary Dore, "She's Beautiful When She's Angry" is the first film about second-wave feminism to illustrate clearly the distinctions between what became the global women's health movement and how, as a movement, OBOS was somewhat closer to the heart of women's liberation than to mainstream feminism at the time. Rather than celebrating "girl power," Dore illustrates an honest, critical, and inclusive image of the history of second wave feminism. "It explains the place of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in providing a feminist guide to women's health and medical care, while providing a bibliography for who was organizing and how to organize for both local and national change."

Swenson's mother was eight years old when women won the right to vote and electricity came to the immigrant farming community where she was born. By the time Swenson became a mother, she was president of a women’s rights organization. Thus, why Swenson feels, "one of the high points of “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” is the tribute paid and the link made to that first wave, which started with such a sweeping agenda and ended after less than a century with the single, narrow goal of giving women the right to vote."