Buried History: The Woman Who Created the Home Pregnancy Test
This episode was originally published in 2014, and this episode is a republishing of the Feb 28, 2024 Encore, titled “The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test.” In 1965 Margaret Crane was a young designer creating packaging for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” and so she made it a reality for potentially pregnant people to be able to...
7 Shows to Listen to this Women’s History Month
We’re knee deep in Women’s History Month and at Making Contact we’re celebrating the best way we know how: highlighting the stories of women making change and fighting for a better future for ourselves and all those around us along the way. Check out these stories from Making Contact featuring the often untold stories impacting women everyday: 1.Don’t Let Them See You Bleed: PERIOD From period stigma to the unfair tax on...
Reproductive Justice: The Ongoing Struggle for Bodily Autonomy (Encore)
Today we share excerpts from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary filled with stories that still resonate today as women face new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence. The documentary tells the stories of the activists of the Women’s Liberation Movement that gained traction in the late 1960s and led to social and policy changes that set women on a path towards equality and reproductive...
Who’s Afraid of DEI?: Interrogating Gender & Race in the Workplace (Encore)
“There was not a moment that I came into the workplace and thought that I would belong or be treated properly or equally.” Ruchika Tulshyan, a workplace inclusion expert, paraphrases an interview with Ijeoma Oluo, a thought leader on race in America, for Tulshyan’s book, Inclusion on Purpose. In the conversation featured in this episode, these two women talk about Ruchika’s misassumptions about race and gender in the workplace in her...
The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test
In 1965 Margaret Crane was a young designer creating packaging for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” and so she made it a reality for potentially pregnant people to be able to know about and take control of their own lives and bodies. But while the design of the prototype was simple, Crane faced the issues we continue to fight when it comes to...