From opportunity to obligation: Medicalization of post-menopausal sexuality in Turkey

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the constructions of sexuality after menopause in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period of increased medicalization of menopause in Turkey. I argue that the medicalization of menopause in Turkey contributed to framing sexual problems in middle age as the woman’s responsibility, offering hormone therapy as a solution and part of ‘maintenance work.’ Menopausal women’s sexuality is defined in relation to their partner’s sexuality in a monogamous marriage, and remaining sexually active is framed as a woman’s duty. These discussions contribute to understanding how medical authority is differently invoked in shaping middle-age sexuality in local contexts.