THE KNOWLEDGE OF MENOPAUSE: AN ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC AND EVERYDAY DISCOURSES.
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 316
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Women's Studies.
Description: Menopause in the United States culture is viewed predominantly as a hormone deficiency disease, rather than as a naturally occurring event. The scientific discourses and practices of the western world related to midlife women and menopause have contributed to the evolution of a stereotypic picture of the menopausal woman as irritable, frequently depressed, asexual, and engulfed with hot flashes. The stereotypes of women in our society impose restricted positions on women as they are classified as products of their reproductive system and its hormones.

The aim of this research was to explore the interrelation between the knowledge in the scientific discourses and the knowledge in the everyday discourses of midlife women regarding the closure of menstrual life. The significance of this study is that it provides a social, historical, and cultural horizon from which to begin to understand the experiences of menopause. By developing an alternative knowledge of menopause, this research challenges the prevailing discourses of menopause, resists the way these discourses have solidified into truth, and makes visible the links between values, assumptions, research, and knowledge.

A poststructuralist approach, based on the works of Michel Foucault, provided the theoretical framework for this case study of the knowledge of menopause. The language of menopause in the scientific/medical literature of menopause, both present and past, and the language of a select group of midlife women provided the data for analysis. Twenty interviews were conducted with 11 healthy, white, middle-class women, ranging in age from 47 to 55 years. The interrelation of the effects of the professional knowledge upon midlife women was investigated through a discourse analysis comparing the scientific conceptualizations of menopause with the experiences described by the sample of midlife women. From the analysis of the relationship between the knowledge of control and resistance, several vulnerable points in the existing structure were identified from which nurses can challenge the scientific and medical knowledge of menopause.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-10, Section: B, page: 4452.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON, 1989.

School code: 0262.