With few exceptions, studies in the climacteric and research on menopause have been clinical in nature and frequently pertained to endocrinological imbalances. However, a growing number of studies by trained social scientists are appearing. In some cases these are ethnographic studies (e.g., Maoz 1973; Flint 1974; Davis 1983; Beyene 1984; and Lock 1986) while others are survey and/or theoretical in nature (e.g., Bart 1979; Datan et al. 1981; Brown 1982; Kaufert 1982; du Toit and Suggs 1983; Lock 1985; McKinlay and McKinlay 1985; du Toit 1986; Beyene 1986). Valuable groundwork for these latter studies were done by others, frequently psychologists. Researchers and writers have benefited from the work of Neugarten et al. (1963), Bart (1972), Gutmann (1977), Maoz and Durst (1979), Cooke and Greene (1981), and the continued questions and contributions of these and other scholars. Currently the most exciting work is done when persons representing different disciplines and working together, frequently in a cross-cultural context, share information and data analysis. It is rewarding to ask sociological and anthropological questions about the social aspects of aging and the climacteric specifically. It is also informative to get the social significance of physiological events and changes as these frequently underlie changes in the social status of persons. The data for this paper were collected during a year's fieldwork in southern Africa and form part of a team project. During 1984-85, five communities were simultaneously studied.1 Each member of the research team administered the use of identical interview schedules developed for this project, following the same temporal and topical sequence in the process. For each research population a total of 60 women were selected, of whom 30 were premenopausal and 30 were postmenopausal (the latter category being definitionally limited to a condition resulting from natural aging and ovarian failure, rather than resulting from surgery). While the research samples are relatively small, they provide tremendous depth due to the nature and scope of the topics covered in the structured interviews. The product, then, consists of quantitative and qualitative material containing specific data on each of the particular sites, and comparative data on rural, urban, and ethnic communities situated in the southern tier of Africa. This paper pertains to only one of the five communities studied namely the Indian women, predominantly resident in Laudium on the outskirts of Pretoria, Transvaal. [The reader will find good general discussions of Indian South Africans in Kuper (1960) and Meer (1969)].