We are in the midst of the post-third wave feminism movement, when gender equality and sexual liberation have indeed become a common concept in the Global North and are influencing the Global South. Women can do anything that men can. Gender difference is being slowly eliminated. However, there is one thing that is still fundamentally reserved to women: the reproduction itself, including pregnancy and giving birth. So far, neither men nor technology can share this responsibility yet. As a result, female reproductive health, contraception and laws and regulations to make sure women can make decisions on their very own body are extremely important. Contraception should not be a labor limited to women, however, women do tend to be more devoted and concerned about it due to imbalance of gender roles in reproduction. The twentieth century witnessed the rise of contraceptive methods that women can take charge of without men participating or co-deciding. The foremost one is the invention and popularization of contraceptive pills. How did it happen? How come a single pill was the game changer of the post World War II world? As a group of six women, we are intrigued by these questions. Through a series of personal stories, a short flashback of the story of pills unfolds. However, even defining pills as 'the game changer' of the twentieth century and acknowledging the benefits of it on the emancipation of women, people should also be aware of the shortcomings and social concern.

Why was the birth control pill so revolutionary in the twentieth century and why has it become even more controversial today? These are the central questions we want to answer in our project. It is an exhibition that shows the history of contraception and how it changed the lives of many women. These rights and choices for women were not always there. They were fought for for a very long time by generations of women and their allies. That is why we want people to be able to relate to our exhibition or to identify to the personal stories. We want to address topics like the pill-taking in the twentieth century, the role of the pharmaceutical industry in shaping the understanding of the pill by the public, the influence it had on social and religious lives, … . The pill was of such importance in the twentieth century, but in our opinion, we should not define the role of the pill today as it was seen in the twentieth century: that of being undoubtedly life-changing in only a positive respect.

We want to create an exhibition with a cluster of benefits, to establish a strong foundation. For us it is important not only to clarify the history, and our vision on the pill, but to also involve our audience in the process of this debate.

The international team behind The Pill Expo consists of six ambitious women with Belgian, Chinese and Greek nationalities. Our passion for culture brought us together. All six of us are master students Cultural Studies at the Belgian university KU Leuven. We created this exhibition as a part of the course 'Cultural Policy'. We started off with the theme 'game changers in the twentieth century', since our expo is part of the Europeana XX, Century of Change project. Almost immediately, we agreed that the history of the birth control pill was the topic to go with. This digital exhibition is the result of months of virtual hard work. Due to the Covid pandemic and living in different countries, we weren't able to meet each other in real life. However, that didn't stop us from developing a great friendship while working together on this project.

If you have any questions, remarks, suggestions, ... you can reach us via europeanaxx.thepillexpo@gmail.com. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

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