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The Menopause
Occurs between the ages of 45-55 when a woman’s oestrogen levels decline and she stops
having periods and is no longer able to get pregnant naturally.
‘Symptoms’ are said to include: hot flushes, night sweats, sexual discomfort, difficulty sleeping,
anxiety, reduced sex drive, problems with memory/concentration and osteoporosis.
Marie Stopes, The Change of Life in Men and Women (1936): ‘The crises of a woman’s life have
been much descanted upon by men medical writers [and] perhaps the most artificially created
has been her change’.
Medicalisation of Menopause
 For medicalisation theory see Ivan Illich and I.K. Zola. For medicalisation of ideas about gender difference see Ludmilla
Jordanova, Sexual Visions (1989).
 Menopause first discussed as a medical issue in the 18th century. Dr John Hunter (1728-1793): ‘The female, at a much
later time of life, when the powers of propagation cease, loses many of her peculiar properties, and may be said, except
from mere structure of parts, to be of no sex, even receding from the original character of the animal, and approaching,
in appearance, towards the male, or perhaps more properly towards the hermaphrodite’.
 19th century – defined as a pathological disease (like other ‘diseases’ of women associated with reproductive organs and
‘changes’ across the life cycle). Symptoms included: hot flushes, sweats, weight gain, backache, fatigue, headache, dizzy
spells, irritability, nervousness, apathy, depression, emotional instability, feeling of suffocation, forgetfulness, insomnia,
panic, chest pain, breast pain, constipation, diarrhoea, changes in libido, anxieties about the body.
 Associated diseases included: climacteric insanity’ or ‘involutional melancholia’ or ‘old maids’ insanity’.
 20th century – linked to osteoporosis, depression (various other ageing diseases).
Menopause and the Life Cycle
 Seen as the final stage before death. Old age began at 45 in the 19th century (F.B. Smith, The People’s Health).
 Linked to physical decline (possible loss of body’s feminine attributes and acquisition of male ones.
 19th century – womanhood defined by motherhood. Menopause thus caused crisis of femininity/women lose their social
function and purposes. Problematic category of women.
 Simone de Beauvior in The Second Sex (1949), argued that medical discourses invested reproductive femininity with
elements of ‘service’/work and consequently rendered women useless after menopause.
Treatment? Hormones
 Research on hormones as a ‘treatment’ for menopause began in 1910s. Menopause redefined as a hormonal disease
rather than a pathological or ‘reproductive’ disease.
 Medications addressed hot flushes, mood swings, and palpitations – restored ‘normal’ hormonal balance.
 Hormone Replacement Therapy – oestrogen used since the 1930s. Increased after the 1960s (production cheaper – see
week on the pill). Became a huge market for pharmaceutical companies.
‘Normalising’ Menopause: 20th century
 Medical Women’s Federation Research survey (1926) – symptoms of menopause muted for women. 90% carried on
their usual daily routine [findings published in The Lancet (1933)]. See J.-M. Strange, ‘In Full Possession of her Powers’
SHM (2012). Used to justify women’s war work (ww2).
 Women started to discuss and take responsibility for menopause themselves – Marie Stopes, Change of Life (1936);
Janet Quigley, Woman’s Hour [BBC] (1950); Our Bodies Ourselves (1971); Germaine Greer, The Change (1992); Jenni
Murray, Is It Me or Is It Hot in Here: A Modern Woman’s Guide to the Menopause (2003).
Male Menopause
 First identified in 1910 by Kurt Mendel – attracted much attention in early 20th century. Symptoms included sexual and
physical decline, lack of energy, depression.
 Treatments: monkey gland operation, Serge Voronoff (1920s); Vasectomy (Yests, 1930s); Testosterone (1920s onwards);
Viagra (1998). Now largely disappeared. Good case study of socially constructed disease. See E. Watkins, ‘Medicine,
Masculinity and the Disappearance of the Male Menopause, SHM (2008)