Perspectives on Women’s Menopausal Health in India

Abstract

With an increase in the survival rate and shift in the age composition of women, menopause is emerging as one of the major health issues in the sociology of health. Thanks to demographic transition, a sizeable number of women will now spend one-third to half of their life as post-menopausal. The present paper focuses upon the prevailing discourses on women’s menopausal health in the Indian setting. It suggests that though women’s health beliefs, behaviour and coping patterns in the Indian context differ from their Western counterparts, huge similarities are found in socio-cultural and medical discourses on menopause. In most of these discourses women are marginalised and seen as inferior to men. However, the epidemiological studies on women’s menopausal health in India suggest that menopause is a normal life event where menstruation ceases; it is not associated with the bio-psycho-social morbidity paradigm as prevalent in the West.