Our Menses, Ourselves: Research and Commentary from The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Abstract

The menstrual cycle is a unique aspect of being female that includes both biological and psychosocial experience. Individual girls and women experience cycle-related biological events, such as menarche (first menstruation), menstruation, amenorrhea, or menopause, within a cultural context in which prevailing cultural views about menstrual cycle experience play a role. The articles that we present in this special issue of Sex Roles raise awareness about menstrual experience as a biopsychosocial phenomenon that contributes to development of the self-concept in individual women and to more general notions of what being female is all about. More broadly, the authors investigate the contribution of context to contemporary menstrual cycle experience. The authors of these articles are colleagues who are members of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research (SMCR). The Society was formed in 1977 by a group of multidisciplinary scholars who understood the centrality of the menstrual cycle in women’s health and more broadly in women’s lives. Founding members were committed to promoting feminist, woman-centered research on the menstrual cycle to redress the narrow and mostly negative focus on the role of menstrual cycle in reproduction to that date. Since 1977, the Society has held biennial conferences, which have yielded more than a dozen published volumes on menstrua-