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Menopause As a Social and Cultural Construction Bre'on Kelly XULAneXUS Volume 8 | Issue 2 Article 4 4-1-2011 Menopause as a Social and Cultural Construction Bre'on Kelly Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.xula.edu/xulanexus Recommended Citation Kelly, Bre'on (2011) "Menopause as a Social and Cultural Construction," XULAneXUS: Vol. 8 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.xula.edu/xulanexus/vol8/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by XULA Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in XULAneXUS by an authorized editor of XULA Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Kelly: Menopause as a Social and Cultural Construction ! ! Volume 8, Issue 2, April 2011. Scholarly Note. 29-39. <http://xulanexus.xula.edu/textpattern/index.php?id=114> ! Menopause as a Social and Cultural Construction Bre’on Andrice Kelly, Sociology Faculty Mentor: Dr. Christopher Faircloth Abstract When the word “menopause” is mentioned in this modern age, too often a picture appears of an unstable, mature woman, fragmenting her family with her emotional instability. This essay explores this image as a social and cultural construction. Drawing initially from the medicalization model exposed in sociology, I discuss the social construction of menopause and the related medical versus feminist Bre’on Kelly is a Sociology debate. Lastly, using studies of menopause from various cultures, major with a minor in this literature review explores how women of different cultures Psychology from New Orleans, define, give meaning to, and experience menopause, as well as the LA. Upon graduating from personal, societal, and cultural implications of these. Xavier, she plans to enter graduate school in either Key Terms: Counseling or Gerontology. Kelly’s research interests include • Menopause • Hormone Replacement Therapy menopause, aging, and • Culture • Medicalization medicalization. She has also • Feminism • Age participated in Festival of Scholars, where she presented her research on menopause across cultures. Kelly’s initial involvement with this project began as an assignment for her Deviance class. She also notes that her project expanded after she enrolled in Medical Sociology and Comparative Sociology, where she acquired different perspectives for her research. Published by XULA Digital Commons, 2010 1 XULAneXUS, Vol. 8 [2010], Iss. 2, Art. 4 30 B. Kelly ! Introduction Therapy (HRT) can be given to supplement the body with adequate levels of estrogen and Frequently, the topic of menopause is progesterone (Lupton, 1996). described in terms as a time of “feminine change,” in which an older woman experiences emotional In most societies, menopause marks major unsteadiness or deranged behavior. As a social disruption and a turning point in a woman’s life. construct, a vision of a hopeless and dismal The implications of reaching menopause vary “women” who feels she has no reason to look from one society to another, depending on the forward to the future, also comes to mind. Those socio-political and economic structure of each who are experiencing this phase of female society and the condition of life it provides for development would concur that these stereotypical women of all ages. In most non-westernized generalizations are false. The majority of women countries, menopause has yet to be medicalized. do not experience major and permanent changes; This has important everyday implications for the many will live to double their age. In fact, many mundane experience of menopause by women and women say that during their postmenopausal stage its social construction. they have renewed energy. Using studies of menopause from various cultures, this literature According to Peter Conrad, to review explores how women of different cultures “medicalize” means to make something that is not define and experience menopause, as well as the medical under the power and control of personal, societal, and cultural implications of biomedicine (1992). In order for something to be these. First, I explain menopause as a social medicalized, it must be diagnosed with a condition construction and examine the debate between as an illness or disease that needs medical medical and feminist interpretations of treatment...This diagnosis, he argues, is a social menopause. This cross-cultural literature review of construction and is subject to great variation menopause studies is important because it allows among scientists and physicians over time us to see how cultural perceptions vary by drawing (Conrad, 1992). Importantly to the argument from foundational arguments in medical sociology presented here, it is an entirely western and medical anthropology and furthers our critical phenomenon. Cross-cultural studies of menopause analysis and understanding of both the lived have challenged the western biomedical emphasis experience of menopause and its social on physiological symptoms during menopause and construction. offered alternative understandings of menopause (Zeserson, 2001). This exemplifies that the Social Construction of Menopause understanding of menopause as a hormone deficiency is neither predetermined nor fixed, but Medical texts utilize a western bio-medical rather a bio-culturally constructed discourse, which construct menopause as a failed accomplishment. production or a breakdown of the normal functions in the female body and possibly a danger Cross cultural ethnographies reveal that the to a woman’s health (McPherson, 1990). symptoms considered by Western medicine as the According to the medical model, estrogen and “classical” signs of menopause such as hot flashes, progesterone are hormones produced by a night sweats, vaginal dryness, and memory loss woman’s ovaries. When the ovaries no longer are not frequently experienced by women in non- produce adequate amounts of these hormones (as western cultures (Beyene, 1989; Flint & Samil, in menopause) or when one hormone is in higher 1990; Lock, 1993). Research has shown that production than the other, Hormone Replacement menopause is subject to a wide degree of https://digitalcommons.xula.edu/xulanexus/vol8/iss2/4 2 Kelly: Menopause as a Social and Cultural Construction Special RelationshipsMenopause 31 ! interpretation on the part of women who In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the experience it. For example, Kaufert (1988) women’s rights movement began to challenge interviewed Canadian women and found that they medical authority by questioning the legitimacy of tended to define themselves as menopausal if there the disease model of menopause (McCrea, 1983; had been a change in their accustomed pattern of Lewis, 1993). In contrast to the disease model, menstruation. These women did not wait until feminists agree to some extent that HRT can help menstruation had stopped entirely. For these women cope with temporary menopausal changes women, menopause was not an event but a such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness; however, process based on perception and interpretation. the benefit of utilizing HRT for the long term is to Some of these women even went as far as calling help prevent osteoporosis. themselves menopausal, regardless of the status of their cycle. Feminists have attempted to show that menopause is not an event that limits For Anglo/European women, their cultures psychological or physical capacities, but instead a perceive menopause as distressing and natural aging process that is neither a disease nor a embarrassing, requiring treatments such as HRT disorder. McCrea (1983), Meyer (2003), and (Lupton, 1996; Green, et al., 2002; Kagawa- Ferguson and Perry (2001) all examined the Singer, et al., 2002). However, a group of women feminist approach and believe that menopause is living in a small village in South Walesbelieves normal and unproblematic. McCrea (1983) traces that menopause is a threat to their feminine menopause back to the synthesis of estrogen. identity and is seen as a disadvantage because they Meyer (2003) considers the menopausal phases are aging and losing control over their bodily that women encounter as something normal. processes (Skultan, 1970). Both of the cases However, many feminists consider the medical mentioned above take on different perspectives problem that arises with menopause as one that regarding the medicalization process: the can be treated or even prevented by proper diets “feminine” and “medical” models of menopause and exercise, combined with vitamin supplements (Lewis, 1993; McCrea, 1983; Meyer, 2003). (Lewis, 1993; McCrea, 1983).Although there is no one, feminist view of menopause, feminist Feminist vs. Medical Perspective literature proves to be suspicious of HRT because the medicalization of natural life processes needs The medical model looks at menopause as to involve natural life control (Conrad, 1992). an illness. Physicians have explained the problem Many feminists, health researchers, and activists of middle-aged women from a particular have reviewed the medicalization of menopause perspective and see the problems experienced and resisted the medical establishment’s during menopause as either “all in the head” or the promotion of HRT to treat the symptoms of result of a deficiency to be treated with hormones menopause. (McCrea, 1983). Menopause involves a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms Feminists argue against medicalizing such as osteoporosis, heart problems, hot flashes, menopause. The medical perspective views and an overall melancholic existence. As noted menopause as an illness to be treated with HRT or earlier,
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