Myths and misconceptions : migrant and refugee women's constructions and experiences of menopause

It is a bitter irony: Menstruation is positioned as a woman's curse within cultural and biomedical discourse (Kissling), yet the end of the reproductive years does not bring a reprieve from women being positioned as mad, moody, or vulnerable because of the womb (Ussher 92). In the nineteenth century, menopause was positioned as a time of reproductive crisis, with the central nervous system in disarray; thus, menopause was "universally admitted to be a critical and dangerous time for women" (Tilt 15). Twentieth-century medicine continued this pathologizing discourse through establishing the myth of menopausal deficiency disease as a medical truth and normalizing the practice of a medically managed midlife through hormonal replacement therapy (HRT) (Wilson 43). The menopausal woman was positioned as inherently debilitated by the "deficiency" of her aging body, her "senile" ovaries described by one medical text as a "shrunken and puckered organ, containing few if any follicles" (Netter 34), which resulted in the "death of womanhood" (Wilson 16).