Abstract
The present study intends to understand the experience of sexuality after menopause among a group of women, through their life experiences, considering the construction of meanings attributed to this phase by doctors and patients in the gynaecologist's office environment. The issues involving menopausal female sexuality such as low libido and decreased sexual pleasure are associated to oestrogen levels plunges by doctors, frequently described as ‘symptoms’, during the research. During the gynaecological visits, women's perceptions about sexuality during menopause can go through a process of construction/reconstruction and negotiation. It changes the way women perceive the stage, leading to deep consequences in the way women experience the phenomena in their own body. The analysis is based on ethnographic material collected between September 2009 and October 2010 in a Brazilian university hospital. It includes interviews with women attending the Menopause Outpatient Facility and their doctors (gynaecology residents and medicine undergraduate students), observations during gynaecological visits and the group meeting follow-up, responsible to provide psychological assistance at the women's clinic.
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Notes
The group therapy sessions included women from the Women's Healthcare Centre who were accompanied by a doctor. This follow-up carried out by the doctors was a rare fact: Among the 64 appointments observed, only one doctor asked the patient to do therapy. The group meetings were on a weekly basis and went on for 4 months. The aim of the sessions was to discuss issues about ‘symptoms’ of menopause, such as depression, low libido, insomnia etc. However, the conversations in these therapy sessions were merely to reinforce the doctor's opinions from the school hospital.
Menopause is understood as the last menstruation and then the absence of ovulatory cycles for 12 months. Menopausal status includes premenopausal, perimenopausal and postmenopausal phases (Nelson et al. 2005).
During the research period, a minimum salary in Brazil was about $200/month.
According to Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (2010), the official racial/skin colour categories were ‘branco’, ‘preto’, ‘pardo’ and ‘amarelo’. The categories were freely translated as white, black, brown (‘pardo’) and yellow. However, some women interviewed did not identify themselves with the official racial/ skin colour categories. They referred to themselves as ‘morena’ instead of brown. Whenever they used this category (morena), we kept it in respect of their choice.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the participants for their contributions. This work was funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq—057/2008) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES—doctorate sandwich scholarship).
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This research carried out in accordance with Brazilian Resolution 196/96 of the CNS (National Health Council) on research involving humans and has the approval of the Ethics Committee of the School of Medical Sciences, UNICAMP (State University of Campinas), opinion: 736/2009.
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Feltrin, R.B., Velho, L. Sexuality After Menopause: Ethnographic Study in a Brazilian Hospital School. Sex Res Soc Policy 11, 76–87 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-013-0133-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-013-0133-6