JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Copyright © The Author, 2018
Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
ISSN 2068 – 0317
http://compaso.eu
The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature
review
Ilona Voicu1
Abstract
Menopause is not only a natural biological aspect of women’s life, but, also, a social
construct, mainly due to the contribution of the medical science. The article analyzes, in
its first four parts, how this social construction has evolved, starting with the vision of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th century medicine, that approached menopause
as cause of multiple women’s diseases, continuing with the transformation of
menopause, in the middle of the 20th century, in a specific disease (the oestrogen
deficiency disease), due to the discovery of the synthetic oestrogen and, later, in a
syndrome, and finishing with the potential role of the in-vitro fertilization in
reconstructing the image of menopausal woman as “useless body”. The last part of the
article aims to capture the main feminist critiques of these types of social construction
and to stress out some gaps in the Romanian feminist approaches regarding this topic.
Keywords
Menopause, social construction, disease, feminist critique
When you are a woman in your fifties, there are speeches that prepare you for a
particular stage of your life: menopause. Most of the things I faced (from a few women I
knew and who agreed to talk about it, from doctors, in online media) presented it as a
kind of inevitable disease, not a deadly one, but one that is unpleasant enough to require
serious preparations, a kind of forefront of strength to help you not become a danger to
1
Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, Romania, ilona.voicu@yahoo.com
11
Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
yourself and to others (see, for example, the article “Be prepared: menopause danger!”,
http://www.csid.ro/health/sanatate/fiti-pe-faza-pericol-de-menopauza-8320278/, were the
menopause is presented as a phenomenon which affect not only the women, but the
entire family). In addition, you are told, it is the equivalent of old age, so why not try to
prolong the period you are young, beautiful (or, at least not disagreeable), and socially
important? “I won’t become grey and invisible” is a phrase from Germaine Greer’s book,
“The Change”2, told by her 50 years old best friend, when they were looking to a middleage woman trying to sneak as fast as possible among the people on the sidewalk. It is a
phrase that synthesizes the anxiety of any woman who is preparing to be menopausal or
who has already gone through this stage of her life, but, also, is a kind of promise that
you will try to not “disappear” yourself, along with the disappearance of your
reproductive abilities. Why has a natural biological aspect of our life, as women, become
so scary, while others, like pregnancy or maternity, have not? This has always been the
perspective on menopause or this is a recent way to represent it? In other words, is
menopause only a biological phase in women’s life, or is, also, a socially constructed
phenomenon.
In order to respond to these questions, the present literature review has the
following purposes:
• to analyze the main approaches regarding menopause as disease, using historical
and cultural differences in order to find out how the image of menopausal woman
has evolved;
• to find potential research themes regarding the social construction of menopause.
Menopause as cause of disease – the vision of the 19th century and the beginning of the
20th century medicine
In an article that examines the Victorian attitudes toward puberty and menopause in
America, Caroll Smith-Rosenberg (1973) underlines the fact that the medicine of that
époque was practiced under the conviction that women are “prisoners” of their
reproductive functions. From puberty to menopause, almost all of women’s health issues
were explained from this perspective, as consequence of bad function of their
reproductive apparatus. According to this author, the consequences of menopause were,
at that time, considered to be multiple and diverse, starting with flushes, and going
through more serious problems such as paralysis, apoplexy, tumours, tuberculosis,
diabetes, etc. Moreover, emotional problems such as hysteria, depression, and irritability,
and, also, episodes of insanity were considered quite common for menopausal women, as
direct consequence of their new state (Smith-Rosenberg, 1973) or as consequence of
continuing to be sexual active at this age, when the sexual intercourse was considered as
a “morbid impulse” (McPherson, 1981).
2
12
Germanine Greer (1992). The Change. Women, Ageing and the Menopause. London: Penguin Books, p. 11.
Voicu / The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
But not all medical specialists from this period saw menopause as a negative and
critical phase in women’s life. For example, Tilt noted, in his book from 1882, “The Change
of Life in Health and Disease” the fact that “the menopausal period could thus become
the “Indian summer” of a woman's life - a period of increased vigour, optimism, and even
of physical beauty (apud Smith-Rosenberg, 1973, p.65).
The predominant vision of menopause as causing serious health problems
continued in the beginning of the 20th century. For example, in a edition from 1928 of the
Larousse Médical Illustré, menopause is called as “critical age”, and is described as a
period in women’s life associated with numerous problems: “circulatory and nervous
system disorders occur: hot flushes, congestive thrusts in the face, profuse sweating,
feeling of suffocation, heartbeat, hearing disorders, heaviness in the lower abdomen,
heartburn stomach, slow digestion, respiratory trouble.” (pp.1040-1041).
If menopause had been considered such an important cause of disease for
women, what kind of treatment would have been recommended, in order to prevent
these associated diseases? The 19th century medicine doesn’t propose specific
treatments, but some recommendations regarding the life style are frequently cited in
papers and studies regarding this topic. McPherson (1983) underlines the fact that, in the
19th century, the physicians commonly recommended, for menopausal women, “a quiet
life-style, avoidance of mental activities, and a commitment to domesticity” (p.101), and
Smith-Rosenberg (1973), also, emphasizes that the common vision for that époque,
between medical staff, was that women, at this age “should alter their style of life and
retire from the world into the bosom of their family” (p.66).
At the end of the 19th century, another approach, much more intrusive, became
more and more popular in medicine: the gynaecological surgery. It was a perspective
based on the theory that all women’s mental disorders have sexual origins. In
consequence, these disorders could be prevented by destroying the source – the
women’s genital organs (McPherson, 1981). Thus, clitoridectomy, female circumcisions
and “castrations” (extirpations of the ovaries) became frequent treatments, inclusive at
the age of menopause. In the USA, for example, there were gynaecologists from this
period who “boasted that they had removed from 1,500 to 2,000 ovaries apiece”
(McPherson, 1981, p.102), and some of them, who had experienced on poor women
(most of them black or Irish immigrants) were gain medical rewards and public
recognition for their medical contribution (McPherson, 1981).
The beginning of the 20th century doesn’t come with remarkable discoveries in this
curative approach, but it deserves to be mentioned the fact that the retirement and the
isolation are no more the main recommendations. In Western Europe, they seemed to be
replaced with a healthy life style: outdoor physical exercises and a diet with green
vegetables and fresh fruits (Larousse Médical Illustré, 1928). However, gynaecological
surgeries continued to be recommended and practiced, at least in the USA. According to
Barker-Benfield (1975), American gynaecologists continue to perform clitoridectomy until
1925, female circumcision at all ages, up to menopause, until 1937, and female castrations
until 1910.
13
Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
For the beginning of the 20th century, an important contribution to the
reinforcement of the gynaecology under the menopausal women’s life is represented by
the psychoanalytical approach. Freud and his disciples sustained that the menopause is
considered as cause of psychic wound. According to Bruck (1979), “Freud believed that
previously undisturbed women could become neurotic at the menopause: he said they
often get ‘quarrelsome and obstinate, petty and stingy, showing typical sadistic and analerotic features which, they did not show before’” (p.41). Also, one of Freud’s disciples,
Helene Deutsch (apud McPherson, 1981) described menopause as a ‘narcissistic
mortification’ and a very traumatic phase in women’s life, once fertility ended.
Menopause as disease – the role of oestrogen / hormone replacement therapy
The menopause started to be treated as a disease relatively recent (in the middle of the
20th century), and this new social perspective is related with a scientific discovery in
medicine: the artificial oestrogen. In 1923, doctors discovered that ovaries produce
oestrogen and progesterone, two hormones considered responsible for the good health
state of women (McPherson, 1981, 1985). In 1938, according to McPherson (1981, p.105),
“Diethylstilboestrol (DES), the first laboratory-produced oestrogen was synthesized […]
and physicians began to explore the use of synthetic oestrogens in laboratory and clinical
research. Menopause […] was investigated as a possible condition for synthetic
oestrogen application”. After almost 30 years, mainly due to the work of dr. Wilson,
menopause became a disease: the oestrogen deficiency disease, defined by the author of
this new ideology regarding menopause, as a dangerous but curable one: “the
transformation, within a few years, of a formerly pleasant, energic woman into a dullminded but sharp-tongued caricature of her former self is one of the saddest of human
spectacles. The suffering is not hers alone – it involves her entire family, her business
associates, her neighbourhood storekeepers, all others with whom she comes into
contact. Multiply by millions, she is a focus of bitterness and discontent in the whole
fabric of our civilization. And the supreme tragedy is that, in the light of present medical
possibilities, all this is unnecessary” (Wilson, 1966, p.94). It’s an apocalyptical image with
middle-age women with low levels of oestrogen and high levels of bitterness and anger,
ready to destroy the entire humanity. This image of menopause as disease continued to
be promoted for decades. More than that, there are authors who tried to convince the
audience that the perception on menopause as natural event in women’s life could be
more dangerous than they imagine. For example, in an article from 1989, W.H.Utian, the
founder of the North American Menopause Society, wrote: “Many women perceive
menopause – like menses and pregnancy – as just another physiologic event in the course
of female reproduction, and do not seek medical help… We know now that menopausal
symptoms must not be ignored. Even asymptomatic menopause may initiate silent,
progressive and ultimately lethal sequelae” (p.2). Not only medical literature promoted
this image of menopause as dangerous disease, but also the popular literature. Women’s
magazines for example were used to create a “collective consciousness of the
14
Voicu / The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
importance of menopause and the health risks following menopause” (Palmlund, 1997,
p.90).
Somehow, menopause represents a good example of a reverse medical step.
Usually, a disease is discovered or defined, and after that, a cure is searched. For
menopause, the treatment was first discovered (synthetic oestrogen), and, in
consequence, menopause started to be considered as a disease which could be perfectly
cured by using it. Thus, Oestrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT) / Hormone Replacement
Therapy (HRT, the European name of the same therapy), became more and more popular
between mid-life women from USA and West Europe, not only because seemed to
prevent unpleasant symptoms of menopause, but also because it was presented as a
possible “fountain of youth”, a panacea for another women’s socially constructed fear:
the loss of youth and, implicitly, of beauty (Greer, 1992; Winterich & Umberson, 1999).
The popularity of the ERT/HRT was so high, at least in the USA, that, according to Greer
(1992), “between 1963 and 1973 sales of oestrogen preparations quadrupled; half of the
post-menopausal female population was using HRT …” (p.185).
Once the therapy was discovered and used, a lot of medical studies started to be
conducted, in order to prove its benefices, but the results of these studies remained
controversial. According to McKinlay and McKinlay (1973), there are, at least, two main
methodological issues: a lot of them are general reports, based on observation or
experience, “presented with no data or with data from vague or unevaluated sources”
(p.535), and, also, a good part of them used only clinical trials, ignoring women who never
see a doctor during their menopausal live. Another type of medical studies failed to
demonstrate that some symptoms are strictly associated with menopause, and
concluded that they are rather signs of aging (MacPhearson, 1981), or symptoms (such as
depression, tiredness or headaches) which could be associated with various causes and
phases of life (Kaufert, 1982). Others started to associate HRT with serious health issues,
such as endometrial or mammal cancer (Greer, 1992; MacPherson, 1985). More and more,
studies and articles emphasized the fact that HRT is far from being risk-free and is, in fact,
a way to socially reconstruct, as a disease, a natural stage in women’s lives, in order to
serve the interests of the pharmaceutical and medical fields (Palmlund, 1997).
Menopause as syndrome – the role of HRT’s risks and alternative and complementary
medicine
In the ‘70s – ‘80s, due to the studies which related HRT with uterine and mammal cancer,
as it is mentioned above, menopause started to be treated rather as a syndrome than a
disease: it is no longer presented as an oestrogen deficiency disease, and more and more
as a natural phenomenon, but associated with a lot of unpleasant signs and symptoms,
such as osteoporosis, and cardiologic risks. The medical discourse changed, but the
remedy remained the same: HRT. As MacPherson (1985, p.12) underlines, “now, that ERT
had been implicated in the increase in uterine cancer, a new rationale was needed to
promote its use. In the United States, the future of the metaphor of menopause as a
treatable disorder was seen as lying in its transformation from disease to syndrome”.
15
Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
Consequently, hormone pills continued to be prescribed, using, often, the argument that
the cancer risks are limited, but the unpleasant and painful associated symptoms are
much more frequent (Callahan, 1993).
This approach is, also, valued by the alternative and complementary medicine
(ACM), which seems, nowadays, to be more and more preferred by menopausal women,
as a safer alternative to HRT. But is ACM more efficient and safer? In an extensive study,
using three databases from January 1980 to April 2002, Kang, Ashbacher and Hammoud
(2002) had been studied the effects of some complementary and alternative therapies,
such as phytoestrogens (soy compounds relatively similar with oestradiol), ginseng, and
acupuncture on symptoms usually associated with menopause: hot flashes, night sweats,
and osteoporosis. Their conclusions underline that “there are insufficient data at this time
to make any conclusions on their potential efficacy and safety for the treatment of
symptoms in menopausal women” (p.204). In another study, Hill-Sakurai, Muller and
Thom (2008), based on semi-structured interviews conducted on 44 women recruited
from primary care clinics, concluded that the decision to use ACM is based, in almost all
cases, on the belief that is “natural”, but the mean of “natural” vary from being gentler
and safer than classical medication to the continuity of familial tradition according to
whom their mothers and grandmothers used this kind of therapy in order to diminish
their menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes or sweats.
The potential role of the in vitro fertilization (IFV) and its potential impact on the social
perspective of menopause
Starting with the last century, medical science created and encouraged an entire industry
of maternity, helping women (or, at least, rich or middleclass women) to decide when and
how to give birth to their healthy, perfect children. According to Franklin (1995), for
example, the human reproduction, due to the medical and scientific progresses, loss its
natural character and became, more and more, a professional procedure. An important
part of this medical and technological progress is represented by the in-vitro fertilization
(IFV) which made reproduction possible for some persons who couldn’t become parents
otherwise. Menopausal women perfectly feet with this category, because the “death” of
their ovaries, as barrier to maternity, seems to be seriously challenged by IFV, as
alternative that could change the image of menopausal woman as non-reproductive one.
IFV allows them to become mothers, even after their reproductive capacities failed. But,
despite this appearance of opportunity, IFV has ethical and social implications that
deserved to be taking into consideration. Firstly, the main objection consists in the fact
that is not a “natural” or “normal” process. As Cutas and Smajor (2015) underlined in
their article, “what causes controversy is ‘motherhood after the normal age of
menopause’, because what the objectors are concerned about is not the presence or
absence of menstruation itself, but advanced age and questions of normality” (p.388).
Secondly, the argument of the ‘abnormality’ often takes the concrete form of ethical
objections which question the reasons why women of a certain age want to become
mothers, as well as the medical teams’ motivation. For example, starting to the case of
16
Voicu / The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
Adriana Iliescu, the oldest woman who gave birth at that date, Cutas (2007) analyzed the
three most common objections against post-menopausal motherhood: “(1) the age of the
mother; (2) the fact that she was single, and (3) the fact that her motivations and those of
the medical team were based on selfishness, and the desire for fame respectively” (p.
459). But, according to her analyze, there are arguments which make these objections
seem hypocritical: there are different other categories of parents who put their children
in risk to become prematurely orphans (such as military personnel), as well as younger
single parents and there is no ethical debate to question their rights to procreate. In fact,
debate consists in a confrontation between the right to autonomy and the
medical/societal right to control this autonomy (Cutas & Smajor, 2015).
The feminist critique of the construction of menopause as disease
One of the most consistent critiques regarding the medicalisation of the menopause is
represented by the feminist approach. This critique, mainly initiated as a reaction to the
more virulent marketing of menopause from the ‘60s – ‘70s, following the discovery of
artificial oestrogen, has few important directions.
Firstly, the feminist authors who analyzed the role of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century medicine in this process underlined the fact that in that
stage, medicine encouraged the social image of women as “defective” versions of men:
their physical experiences, such as menstruation, pregnancy, birth and menopause are
considered as pathological and treated in consequence (Berger, 1999). Thus, the process
of medicalisation of menopause is viewed as part of a patriarchal society, in which gender
represent a power relationship, a relationship of social control of the women’s bodies:
“the history of how the body, and in particular the female body has been brought under
medical control is a history of social control, where professionals trained in scientific
medicine have repeatedly asserted their dominance against other groups engaged in
health care and where they also often acted in the interests of the dominant groups in
society” (Palmlund, 1997, p.91). And thinks seems that doesn’t change very much until
now. For example, as an aspect subsumed to the previous, there are feminist authors
who reproached 20th century medical literature dedicated to menopause that is mainly
produced by men, even though is an exclusively feminine experience, and, often, the
image and expectancies of women regarding their own menopause are shaped in
consequence: “through the literature on menopause is vast, almost none of it has been
written by women. Most of it has been written by men for the eyes of other men;
thousands of middle-aged women troop meekly through the pages of hundreds of
studies assessing their health, their well-being, their status, their needs, their
opportunities, and their problems and we hear hardly one word in their own voices”
(Greer, 1992, p.13). Even though, from the moment Greer wrote her book, things went
through a few changes, and women began to write more about their own experiences on
topics previously considered taboo, those experiences continued to be considered as less
socially and politically important, directly connected with nature and the private sphere,
meanwhile the public domain is a male dominated one. Feminists consider this dichotomy
17
Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
as politically relevant and as expression of the patriarchy: “Women are equipped to carry
and give life. This fact is politically relevant, even if, for example, politics, like theorists of
politics, seem to have given more importance to wars than to birth. […] The political
control over the female reproductive faculties is a constant in the history of the
patriarchy” (Miroiu, 2004, pp.44-45). In this process of transformation of women’s
experiences in natural, private, and, in consequence, socially irrelevant ones, the
medicalisation of menopause perfectly feet, from a feminist perspective: “The
medicalisation of the natural ending of the reproductive cycle was a political achievement
rather than part of the inevitable process of medical science […] Public and political
institutions contributed to the creation of menopause as disease” (MacPherson, 1985,
p.12).
Secondly, there are feminist researchers or, at least, researchers inspired by the
feminist approach, who dedicated their work to the cross-cultural and generational
differences of the menopausal experiences of women, started to the main hypothesis
that it represents a social and cultural mediated experience. In an article which examines
the differences of menopausal experiences between different categories of middle-aged
women (rural and urban women, women with non-English speaking backgrounds, etc.),
based on a research conducted on 140 women, using the focus-group technique, Daly
(1995) concluded that the interpretation of menopausal ‘symptoms’ is socially mediated,
and both gender and age contribute to the negative cultural stereotypes regarding the
social importance of middle-aged women. In another articles, regarding the menopausal
experiences of women from specific countries, Lock (1995) and Chirawatkul & Manderson
(1994) dedicated their studies to mythologies of menopause in Japan and North America,
respectively to the perceptions of menopause in Thailand. Their conclusions are similar,
underlined the importance of the cultural context in the auto-perception of menopause.
The importance of the birth cohort differences in the understanding subjective
menopausal experiences of the American women from different generations is, also,
underlined in a qualitative study conducted on 24 middle-aged women, interviewed in
their homes (Utz, 2011). All these study results contradict the universality of the image of
menopause as disease, and reinforce the idea that, in fact, this social construction of the
menopause can be seen, for example, as part of a public discourse that attempts to
control the effects of the aging of the female body, which loses its social significance with
the loose of the reproductive capacity (Lupton, 1996).
Thirdly, there are studies which emphasize the fact that, beyond signs and
symptoms, for middle-aged women, there are stressful life events (such as loss of their
jobs, the fact that their children leave home, or another health issues) that marked their
perception about life. Additionally, some research findings underlined the pressure of
medical specialists on menopausal women, in order to make them subjects of the HRT,
even they don’t need or don’t want to: “The medicalization of menopause by doctors
may profoundly affect a woman’s menopausal experience. The three women in this study
who did not know perimenopause had begun until their doctors examined them all
received recommendations to begin HRT, even though two of them continued
menstruating. A fourth woman reports that her doctor frightened her into trying HRT
18
Voicu / The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
even though she repeatedly told him she was not interested” (Winterich & Umberson,
1999, p.64).
Finally, another feminist perspective questions the entire idea of “maternal
instincts” and the role of the medical science in glorifying pregnancy, and underlines that
the whole debate about postmenopausal motherhood due to IFV should be translated
from menopausal women’s and medical teams’ responsibilities to the social structure.
This social structure is viewed as patriarchal in essence, “forcing” women to socially
legitimate themselves mainly as caretakers of their own children: “the trouble with
prevalent social attitudes today is that they carry unreflectively the old patriarchal
glorification of the ‘seed’ that incorporates a notion of children as property, women as
caretakers and biology as destiny” (Smith, 1993, p.102).
The Romanian feminist approaches regarding menopause are a very few. The
mention of menopause as exclusive female experience (like pregnancy, birth, and
abortion) in the Mihaela Miroiu’s book, “The way to autonomy” (1994), permits the
author to mention, also, the cultural differences between the mainstream perception and
the way in which menopausal Roma women are perceived in their communities (as gifted
with wisdom, due to the fact they are no longer sexually attractive, and, in consequence,
‘purified’). Also, “The Feminist Lexicon” (2002) contains a short description of
menopause, but, despite the fact that some prejudges regarding the association between
attractiveness and women’s age are mentioned, most of the content of this description is
basically centred on the description of the signs and symptoms of menopause, including
non-specific ones, such as insomnia, loss of memory and of concentration, urinary issues,
etc. That is, in fact, a reinforcement of the medical perspective on menopause, far away
from another feminist approaches, such those mentioned above. Consequently, there are
a lot of opportunities to investigate, for a gender sensitive perspective, which are the
main subjective ways to percept menopause for the Romanian women, and which are the
most important social aspects (such as economical or marital status, ethnicity, etc.) that
mediate the construction of this perceptions.
REFERENCES
Barker-Benfield, B. (1975). “Sexual surgery in late-nineteenth-century America”,
International Journal of Health Services, 5(2): 279 – 278.
Bell, S.E. (1987). “Changing ideas: The medicalisation of menopause”, Social Science &
Medicine, 24(6): 535 – 542.
Berger, G.E. (1999). Menopause and Culture. Pluto Press.
Bruck, C. (1979). “Menopause”, Human Behaviour, 8(4): 38 – 46.
Callahan, J.C (1993). “Introduction”. In J.C. (Ed.) Callahan Menopause. A Midlife Passage.
Indiana University Press: xv -xix.
19
Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2018
Cutas, D., Smajdor, A. (2015). “Postmenopausal Motherhood Reloaded: Advanced Age
and In Vitro Derived Gametes”. Hypatia, 30(2): 386 – 402.
Cutas, D. (2007). “Postmenopausal Motherhood: Immoral, Illegal? A Case Study”.
Bioethics, 21(8): 458 – 463.
Daly, J. (1995). “Caught in the web: The social construction of menopause as disease”
Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 13(2), 115 – 126.
Dragomir, O., Miroiu, M. (2002). Lexicon Feminist. Iași: Polirom.
Franklin, S. (1995). “Postmodern Procreation: A Cultural Account of Assisted
Reproduction” in Faye D. Ginsburg & Rayna Rapp (Eds.). Conceiving the new world
order: the global politics of reproduction. Berkeley, California, University of California
Press: 323-345.
Greer, G. (1992). The Change. Women, Ageing and the Menopause. London: Penguin Books.
Hill-Sakurai, L.E., Muller, J.,Thom, D.H. (2008). “Complementary and Alternative Medicine
for Menopause: A Qualitative Analysis of Women’s Decision Making”. Journal of
Internal Medicine, 23(5): 619 – 622.
Kang, H.J., Ansbacher, R., Hammoud, M.M. (2002). “Use of alternative and
complementary medicine in menopause”. International Journal of Gynaecology and
Obstetrics, 79: 195 – 207.
Kaufert, P.A. (1982). “Myth and menopause”. Sociology of Health and Illness. 4(2): 141 –
166.
Lock, M. (1995). “Encounters with aging: Mythologies of menopause in Japan and North
America”. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 19(4): 527 – 532.
Lupton, D. (1996). “Constructing the Menopausal Body: The Discourses on Hormone
Replacement Therapy”, Body & Society, 2(1): 91 – 97.
McKinlay, S.M., McKinlay, J.B. (1973). “Selected Studies of the Menopause. Annotated
Bibliography”. Journal of Biosocial Science, 5: 533 – 555.
MacPherson, K. (1981). “Menopause as Disease: The Social Construction of a Metaphor”.
Advances in Nursing Science. 3 (2). 95 – 114.
MacPherson, K. (1985). “Osteoporosis and menopause: a feminist analysis of the social
construction of a syndrome”. Advances in Nursing Science. 7(4). 11 – 22.
Miroiu, M. (2004). Drumul către autonomie. Teorii politice feministe. Iași: Polirom.
Palmlund, I. (1997). “The social construction of menopause as risk”. Journal of
Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 18(2). 87 – 94.
Smith, P. (1993). “Selfish Genes and Maternal Myths: A Look at Postmenopausal
Pregnancy”. In J.C. (Ed.) Callahan Menopause. A Midlife Passage. Indiana University
Press: 92 - 119.
Smith-Rosenberg, C. (1973). “Puberty to Menopause: The Cycle of Femininity in
Nineteenth-Century America”. Feminist Studies. 1(3,4): 58 -72.
Utian, W.H. (1989). “Renewing Our Commitment to the Remaining 85%”. Menopause
Management. 2(1,2): 1 – 6.
Utz, R.L. (2011) “Like mother (not) like daughter: The social construction of menopause
and aging”, Journal of Aging Studies, 25(2), 143 – 154.
Wilson, R.A. (1966). Feminine Forever. New York: M. Evans.
20
Voicu / The social construction of menopause as disease: A literature review
Winterich, J.A., Umberson, D. (1999). “How Women Experience Menopause: The
Importance of Social Context”. Journal of Women and Aging. 11(4): 57 – 73.
Larousse Médical Illustré (1928). Paris: Librairie Larousse.
Ilona Voicu graduated, in 1992, undergraduate studies at the University of Bucharest,
Faculty of Sociology, Psychology and Pedagogy (specializing in Psychology). Between
2009 and 2011, she attended the Master's degree “Policies, Gender and Minorities” at
the Faculty of Political Science of the National School of Political and Administrative
Studies (SNSPA). Starting with 2018, she is a PhD Student at the School of Sociology
and Social Work/University of Bucharest, with a thesis regarding the social construction
of menopause of Romanian women. She is working as researcher at the Romanian
National Military Centre of Psychology and Behavioural Health/Romanian Ministry of
National Defence. She has a 20 years’ experience in the social research, in areas such as
military families support, soldier’s reintegration after missions abroad, gender and
sexual violence in the military, and cross-cultural studies.
21