2. 1928 was an important year for women around the globe
Prior to 1928 the United Kingdom, which had previously given women suffrage under somewhat unfair terms, corrected that error by passing a law which made the voting age the same for men and women. Prior to the passage of the Equal Franchise Act men could vote after reaching the age of 21 while women had to wait until they achieved the age of 30. The passage of the act enfranchised enough new women voters that women became – overnight – the majority voting bloc in the United Kingdom, likely a previously unintended consequence. One of the actions taken by the new majority was the banning of a book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, for the fault of being too explicit in its depictions of relationships between men and women. The United States’ moralists agreed with their British counterparts and the book was banned there as well.
The Germans, as they so often have over the course of the centuries, took an entirely different approach to sexual relationships and their all too often consequences which, if not necessarily surprising could still be somewhat less than convenient. Teutonic efficiency was applied to relationships, or rather the potential result of relationships, when two German scientists developed the first at-home pregnancy test, allowing women to learn whether or not they were with child privately, during a time when her doctor was obligated under the law to inform her husband (if she had one) of her condition. The test was modified (primarily by researchers in the United States); originally the test involved rodents, the Americans modified it to use rabbits and the phrase “the rabbit died” entered the lexicon.