Gisela Bock

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Gisela Bock (February 8, 1942-) is a German feminist historian. She was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her father was a chemist. She has taught at the Free University of Berlin (1971-1983), the European University Institute (1985-1989) in Florence, Italy and at the University of Bielefeld. She is currently professor at Free University of Berlin.

In the 1970s, Bock was one of the leaders of a movement to have women paid for housework. Bock's best known work was her 1986 book Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus (Compulsory Sterilization in National Socialism), a study of the 400,000 compulsory sterilizations performed in Nazi Germany between 1934-1945. Bock examined the history of sterilization in Nazi Germany from above and below. She claimed that sexism and racism in Nazism were linked so closely as to be inseparable. Bock also claimed that the Nazi sterilization policy was not a prelude to the genocidical policies of the Nazi regime but were rather an integral part of the population policy of the regime. Finally, Bock maintained pronatalism was not the main concern of Nazi women's policy but antinatalism. She claimed that by threatening all German women with the possibility of compulsory sterilization or abortion if they were not producing children that were "racially fit", the regime vicitimized all women.

This last claim together with Bock's assertions that women who were sterilized suffered more than men who were sterilized and the pain experienced by those women who sterilized should be projected onto the female population of Germany has proven to be controversial. Many historians such as Claudia Koonz have claimed that Nazi population policies were as much pronatal as they were antinatal and the experience of those women sterilized can not be projected onto all women under the Third Reich.

[edit] Work

German

Thomas Campanella: politisches Interesse und philosphische Spekulation, Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1974.
Die andere Arbeiterbewegung in den USA von 1905-1922: die Industrial Workers of the World, München: Trikont, 1976.
co-written with Barbara Duden "Arbeit aus Liebe/Liebe als Arbeit: zur Entstehung der Hausarbeit im Kapitalismus" from Frauen und Wissenschaft: Beiträge zur Berliner Sommeruniversität für Frauen Juli 1976, 1977.
Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Opladen : Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986.
Frauen in der europäischen Geschichte, München:C.H.Beck 2000
(edited with Margarete Zimmermann), Die europäische Querelle des Femmes : Geschlechterdebatten seit dem 15. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart ; Weimar : Metzler, 1997. -
(editor), Genozid und Geschlecht. Jüdische Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Lagersystem, Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus 2005

English

"Women's History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate" pages 7-30 from Gender and History, Volume 1, 1989.
co-edited with Pat Thane Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s, 1991.
co-edited with Susan James Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Female Subjectivity, 1992.
Women in European history - Oxford ; Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 2002
Challenging Dichotomies: Perspectives on Women's History. In Writing Women's History: International Perspectives,ed. Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall,1-23. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[edit] References

Usborne, Cornelie "Bock, Gisela" pages 98-100 from Encyclopedia of Historians edited by Kelly Boyd, Volume 1, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.