Reflecting on the historical resistance to women’s progression within academia and professional fields within Victorian Britain, it was often believed that women’s biological cycle rendered us unstable, unable to effectively reason and prone to emotional upheaval. Ironically, this apparent ‘instability’ was not viewed as an impediment to opressing us into low-paid manual or domestic work roles. The perception of being ‘hysterical’ was not considered an obstacle to nursing, but supposedly disqualified us from aspirational roles like becoming a doctor.
This misguided argument was eventually rejected following decades of opposition and the tragic loss of countless male lives during WWI. Such a devastation saw more women occupying roles traditionally reserved for men during the second World War. However, when the surviving men returned from war, women were once again corralled into domestic duties, unpaid family care, financial dependence on men with a continued enforcement of restrictive interpretations of feminity. Predictably, this eventually precipitated a wave of depression resulting in tranquillisers being widely dispensed. This ‘treatment’ continued to be championed throughout much of the 20th century as the default response to women’s discontent and despair.
This grim history causes me growing unease as I consider the current, seemingly ubiquitous requirement for hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, amongst women of my own generation. While I strongly believe in comprehensive, attainable reproductive healthcare for all women and encourage informed choices regarding our bodies, I do not, in any way, mean to cast judgement on those who choose to pursue HRT or any other medical treatment. If I felt distressed by menopausal symptoms, I, like countless friends, wouldn’t hesitate to use HRT.
Nonetheless, it does concern me when we medicalise women’s sorrow, anxieties, and physical transformations during menopause. In our society, young women and girls are dismissed as emotional and impulsive, whereas women in our 30s are viewed as either preoccupied with having children or with the lack thereof. We’re seen as either distracted by child raising, potentially suffering from post-natal depression, or dealing with the emotional weight of childlessness. However, between our 40s and 50s, women were traditionally considered finally comparable to men in terms of competence and reason. Often during this period, women would begin to experience authority in their roles as their children became more self-sufficient. Yet now, the concept of ‘peri-menopause’ has expanded the illusion of women’s ‘period of irrationality’, resulting in the worrying revival of an antiquated Victorian perception of women, controlled solely by their reproductive systems.
Were you aware that men too experience hormonal fluctuations, which can lead to aggressive behaviour, including causing car accidents and even starting wars? However, we don’t often address these behaviours through medication.
This raises the question, might the frustration displayed by middle-aged women be justified? I once listened to a podcast where a middle-aged woman shared her experience of menopause. She spoke about the resentment she felt towards her family for leaving their dishes and mess for her to clean up after years of her doing it without complaint. As her oestrogen levels declined, she began to express her anger, which made her feel like a terrible person. Hence, she decided to start hormone replacement therapy, which mitigated her negative mood and she returned to her old habit of cleaning up after her family, much to their relief.
I have encountered other women’s shock at their bodies transforming as they age, construing this as some mandate to maintain the bodies of their youth throughout their evolution into older years. This ideology is often peddled by femtech companies that propose their products as solutions to every woman’s ‘brokenness’, driving the belief that females are inherently deficient and require medical and technical intervention. This persistent notion obviously leads to increased profits for these companies.
I acknowledge that for some females, the impacts of menopause can be so severe that hormone replacement therapy is a godsend. Therefore, unerring access to sympathetic medical care for all women to determine whether they classify under this group is crucial. Still, it is exceedingly backward to insinuate that midlife for all women involves mental instability, or to view the female reproductive system’s nature as pathological. Isn’t anyone else concerned that society is returning to medicating assertive women when they start demonstrating maturity and experience, aspects that are seen as authoritative traits in men of the same age?