Provocations Seminar Series 2 - Fifth Provocation

23 October 2024, 12pm

The fifth session in our provocation series two will be led by Dr Elham Amini who is a Lecturer in Sociology at Liverpool University.

This provocation session will encourage thinking about menopause and menopausal experiences as this relates to at least two key aspects of women’s lives, namely, gender and ethnicity through life course perspective and bring some examples from her research on menopausal experiences of Iranian Muslim women. So, instead of focussing on menopausal symptoms, such as hot flushes, anxiety and depression and vaginal dryness and how to fix them by ‘giving hormones’, Elham will aim to explain:

• What are the negative meanings that attached to menopause? why menopause serves as a negative shift in women’s social status and their self-appraisals?
• How and why is it important to understand the menopausal experiences of ethnic minorities in Global North or women from Global South? How knowledge /producing knowledge might exacerbate social inequality and marginalisation and shape “otherness”?
• How a natural and inevitable part of a woman’s life course has been shaped as a catastrophe by celebrities and some journalists? Do we need to pause menopause?
• To what extent do you agree that medications such as Estradiol and lubricants can “fix” the menopause?
• To what extent do you agree that current conversations and education around menopause are inadequate and shapes menopause as an illness? Do they address the underlying reasons of stigma and shame in experiencing menopause?

Host or Publisher NHS R&D NORTH WEST