‘We’ve been trained to put up with it’: real women and the menopause

Abstract

This paper, based on qualitative research among a group of women in South Wales, looks at the meanings they give to the menopause, its effects on their working and family lives and the support currently offered by medicine and health promotion. This study is set against a wider discussion of the medicalization of the menopause, and the organization of work within which the current generation of women are situated. It also argues for a new public health approach including the adoption of more qualitative research techniques that would address the concerns and beliefs of people rather than following the traditional ‘objective’ epidemiological model. The paper concludes that the present generation of women do not share a negative view of the menopause but are struggling against mixed messages from their own cultural background, from promotion of medicalized ‘solutions’ and from contemporary pressures of work.