The Knowledge Of Menopause An Analysis Of Scientific And Everyday Discourses

Menstruation is a topic which is both everyday and sensitive. From Leviticus to Pliny, to twentieth-century debates around 'menotoxin', to advertising and 'having the painters in', Victoria Newton's book offers a lively and innovative exploration of the social and cultural dimensions of menstruation. Through in-depth interviews with men and women, the book explores the many different ways in which this sensitive topic is spoken about in British culture. Looking specifically at euphemism, jokes, popular knowledge, everyday experience and folklore, the book provides original insights into the different discourses acting on the menstruating body and encourages debate about how these help to shape our everyday attitudes towards menstruation.

"In Menopause: A Midlife Passage, [questions about menopause] are considered in depth from a dazzling variety of angles. This is just the serious feminist discussion of menopause that I have been longing for.... its exquisite analyses renew us in our struggles to make sense of it all." -- Alice Dan, Women's Review of Books "Menopause has become a hot (with or without the flashes) topic in America. That's because a critical mass of us have reached it and are educated, aggressive, and confident enough to want to know what's happening to us, and then to talk about it.... Smart, useful, funny, Menopause: A Midlife Passage is a fine addition to the discussion, a healthy companion for this all-important life passage." -- Susan Stamberg, Special Correspondent, National Public Radio "Editor Callahan takes anything but a trendy approach to a very trendy topic. She's gathered essays by scholarly women who have thought through society's position on menopause and menopausal women and don't like what they see: older women denied positive portrayals in mainstream media, menopause treated by the medical establishment as if it were a disease rather than a natural occurrence, and devaluation of older women. Determined to change people's minds with their words, these women speak both powerfully and empoweringly. A must for feminist and women's health collections." -- Booklist "... a bold attempt to go beyond the standard medical framing of women's experience, and to contest the notion that the menopause is straightforwardly a hormonal 'deficiency disease'." -- New Scientist "... [an] entertaining and informative book that takes a very positive attitude toward the 'midlife passage'." -- Fertility News "This book should be required reading for all women's health care providers and anyone else doing counseling of menopausal women." -- Journal of Women & Aging Essayists from various walks of life present female-defined perspectives on menopause and the passage to new physical, social, and cultural development.

My research investigates the power relations involved in the medicalization and commodification of menopause and the many interests at stake beyond the health of women. My historical analysis of the construction of menopause through a postcolonial lens includes a historical review of menopause that contextualizes women's experiences of menopause within social relations of gender, race and class and political, economical and socio-cultural structures. I trace the historical processes by which White Eurocentric knowledge gained dominance in Canada and the privileging of White Eurocentric biomedical knowledge that leaves unrepresented those who do not belong to the dominant group. Biomedical knowledge can then be seen as an expression of power relations.I propose research investigating women's embodiment of menopause through and with their bodies, exploring why certain menopause discourses are more important to some women than others, and inquiring into the silence around the difference of women's menopause experiences.I document how biomedical discourse presented as the view of menopause suppresses other forms of menopause knowledge as well as how women's bodies can become sites for the operation of colonial power through dominant knowledge. An analysis of my interviews with currently practicing biomedical physicians discloses how their approaches to menopause both reproduce and challenge a medicalized understanding as they work within the confines of biomedicine and the health care system.I advocate for state health care changes to conceptualize menopause as normality rather than as abnormality. Individual women themselves cannot make all the changes by accepting lifestyle and personal health responsibility discourses. I discuss the dismantling of the hegemony of biomedical knowledge through multiple approaches to menopause, acknowledging the challenges of dealing with the power and interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the biomedical communities.My analysis of interviews with 20 women offers a way in to discuss: (1) how women engage with dominant menopause discourses--the ambiguities, concerns, challenges, and the rejecting, buying into and modifying of these discourses; (2) how power relations of race, class and gender organize the conditions for women's menopause constructions; and (3) the everyday details of the exploitation of women's menopausal bodies through commodification for profit.

The supplemented edition of this important reader includes a substantive new introduction by the author on the changing nature of feminist methodology. It takes into account the implications of a major new study included for this first time in this book on poverty and gender (in)equality, and it includes an article discussing the ways in which this study was conducted using the research methods put forward by the first edition. This article begins by explaining why a new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality."Just Methods" is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.A key theme running through the readings is the complex interrelationship between social power and inequality on the one hand and the production of knowledge on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values."

This open access handbook, the first of its kind, provides a comprehensive and carefully curated multidisciplinary and genre-spanning view of the state of the field of Critical Menstruation Studies, opening up new directions in research and advocacy. It is animated by the central question: ‘“what new lines of inquiry are possible when we center our attention on menstrual health and politics across the life course?” The chapters—diverse in content, form and perspective—establish Critical Menstruation Studies as a potent lens that reveals, complicates and unpacks inequalities across biological, social, cultural and historical dimensions. This handbook is an unmatched resource for researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and activists new to and already familiar with the field as it rapidly develops and expands.

The 1980s were an important decade for educational inquiry. It was the moment of the “linguistic turn,” with its emphasis on the role of language as a constructor of reality, a structuring agent for institutions such as schools, and a medium for translating knowledge into elements of power for processes of social regulation. Drawing on the work and insights of educational researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz, this book shows how the linguistic turn provided an alternative to both mainline educational research grounded in the ideals of political liberalism and the effort of neo-Marxists to challenge liberal thinking in favor of a scholarship based on class conflict and economic determinism.

Now in its second decade of publication, this landmark series draws together and critically reviews all the existing research in specific areas of nursing practice, nursing care delivery, nursing education, and the professional aspects of nursing.

Looks at the entirety of women's lives, tracing the unique social, psy chological, and physical factors that affect women's health. Expert co ntributors examine a wide range of women's experiences, from surviving breast cancer, to becoming a mother, to coping with chronic illness-a ll from women's perspectives.