ABSTRACT
Bourgeois French women who were recruited to visit the homes of working women to determine their eligibility for government aid were carrying out a policy in which women had no voice. In France, the depopulation crisis and the nationalist pronatalism stimulated by the decline in the birthrate formed the explicit background for all discussions of maternal and child health. The comparison with France also suggests that "race betterment" simply did not provide as compelling a motive for legislative action and intervention by powerful male-controlled institutions as depopulation. In France, medical training was available only through the centralized, state-controlled system of medical education. A relatively strong position in the medical profession, organizational autonomy, and comparative freedom from male-dominated institutions and government agencies gave women reformers in the United States the opportunity and the resources with which to shape public policy.
