Life on the Margins: The Disabled-Enabled Menopausal Body

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar I
  In Paper Session: Breaking the frame: Disability as embodied discourse of change

Abstract

The biomedical model of health care has been predominant in framing women’s sensemaking on menopause. Within this frame, menopause is a sex-related, endocrine deficiency disease caused by diminishing levels of estrogen. The woman’s body in menopause has been constructed as one in decay, decline, and disease, or sick, aging, and old. The biomedical model serves to construct the menopausal woman as disabled. In this study, I interviewed seven women in various stages of menopause to reveal how they construct their identities in relation to menopause. The findings indicate that many of the women live on the margins, portraying themselves as disabled yet also enabled bodies in menopause.

Author

• Linda Vangelis, East Carolina Univ