Discourses of Female Ageing at the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

In the 1990s, in most areas of cultural activity attitudes towards older women seemed hardly to have progressed since the middle of the century. While research into the needs and experiences of older women may have increased, most of it focused on a very small portion of their lives, primarily the menopause. In 2000 Margaret Matlin found that ‘a computer search of the psychology listings under the topic of “Women and retirement” showed only 116 articles and books since 1990. A similar search under the topic “Menopause” revealed 21,405.’¹ Matlin suggests this is not an accurate reflection of the importance of the two life events, and that such an emphasis leads to the medicalisation of female ageing, since menopause continues to be constructed as a disease. Sandra Coney points to the medical definition of menopause as ‘an endocrinopathy or disease of the hormonal system, a “deficiency” syndrome resulting from the loss of oestrogen’.² Such a disease requires medical intervention, in particular the prescription of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). As D. H. Barlow observed in the Lancet in 1993, ‘The consequences of the menopause have now exploded into an important public health issue. Today there can be few medical abbreviations better known to the lay public than HRT.’³ Without being qualified to evaluate the evidence offered as part of the HRT debate, I want to draw attention to the degree of disagreement about the menopause and its meaning even among medical specialists, and the extent to which this has given rise to conflicting discourses, deriving both from that disagreement and from ideologies of female ageing current in society at large, to which they in turn contribute.