ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the context of workplace health and motherhood, examines the basis for protective labour legislation in the early twentieth century, analysing how and why these laws shifted and discussing the social and political implications of Johnson Controls. It proposes that reproductive health received increasing attention by the public, including employers and lawmakers. Feminists who linked abortion rights with women's rights promoted women's health over that of the fetus. In 1976, the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health, federal government agencies and the March of Dimes sponsored a conference, Women and the Workplace, that was attended by workers, industrial hygienists, union representatives, federal scientists and policymakers and some employer physicians. Unionized workers also tried arbitration and collective bargaining, as well as appeals to state human rights commissions and even stockholder resolutions. In 1970, Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and an agency to oversee the nation's workplaces.
