SOC 0851 Chapter 7: Menopause in Cross-Cultural Perspective
• Menopause in Cross-Cultural Perspective
o Menopause is the event that marks the last menstrual cycle
experienced by women and, therefore, the end of a woman’s
fertility, assuming that she ever was fertile (many women are not)
o Postmenopausal women no longer experience menstruation
o In the 1960s in the United States menopause was starting to be
defined as a hormone deficiency
▪ Process that deprived women of the necessary “sex hormone”
estrogen and therefore turned them into something like
lifeless zombies
▪ The end of menstruation puts women in a virtual coma-like
state
▪ Doctors replaced the missing estrogen with hormone
replacement therapy (HRT)
o In the 1970s research began to suggest a link between estrogen
treatment and uterine cancer
▪ Currently, HRT is recommended for women only at the lowest
possibly dose and for the lowest possible amount of time
o One study of Navajo women found that no word exists in the Navajo
language for the event we call menopause
▪ Many women were happy about the end of their menstrual
cycle, as it meant a new level of freedom and opportunities
open to them
▪ They follow a set of rituals that isolate women during their
menstrual cycle, and so the end of menstruation meant
increased freedom, and for some women, that they could now
pursue a new life as a medicine woman, which was not open to
women who were still menstruating
▪ The stage of life during which menopause is likely to occur can
be a fairly positive period
o In the 1940s, scientists had begun perfecting the ability to identify
and purify sex hormones such as estrogen, and pharmaceutical
companies were searching for something to do with these hormones
▪ Estrogen, a sex hormone, is an important part of what gives
women their sex, and to lose this hormone would certainly
mean losing important parts of what it means, biologically
speaking, to be female
