In Full Possession of Her Powers: Researching and Rethinking Menopause in early Twentieth-century England and Scotland

Abstract

This essay examines the attempts by the Medical Women's Federation, founded in 1917, to challenge a medical narrative of menopausal malaise. A survey begun in 1926 of 1,000 women's menopausal experience concluded that, contrary to dominant paradigms of menopause as a dangerous or critical time, the common symptoms of menopause did not interfere with women's lives or general well-being to any significant degree. Despite numerous references to the survey in the critical literature on women's health as evidence of a shift in medical paradigms of menopause, little analysis of the research questions, conclusions or its context exists. This essay examines the survey, the context in which it was conducted and the desire of its authors to use healthy women's experiences of physiological changes for political and cultural ends.