Leaving womanhood behind: knowledge and experience of menopause / Deixar de ser mulher: conhecimento e significado cultural da menopausa

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

This investigation has the objective to understand a group of women´s knowledge and experience of menopause. Medical anthropology is the theoretical basis for the study and the ethnographic methodology the option for data collection. The data collection was carried out with 12 collaborators who were in experiencing menopause through participant observation, semi structured interview and the drawing in a silhouette previously produced. In this drawing the women were asked to represent how they viewed menstruation and menopause, aiming to complement interviews, motivating women to talk about their menopause, to know their representation about their own body. To obtain their interpretation they were asked to make comments on their drawings. We worked data as narratives and analyzed them based on the theoretical framework. In the narratives, we identified categories integrated in six cultural themes: menstruation characterizes woman and defines her role; body sends its signals; God´s power determines body functions; menopause is a body natural event and after menopause womanhood is left behind. After the classification of subcategories, categories and themes, the analysis searched for the common experience of women. This strategy allowed gaining access of both menopause experience and understanding based on their cultural elaborations. Then we compared categories attempting to synthesize such interpretations obtain the meanings. It was possible to understand menopause as a female unique experience, as a result of a singular integrated construction to a meaning net constructed by the group, in which social condition and cultural context are determinants. As result this phenomenon must be carefully dealt by local health professionals. Finally, knowledge about menopause, in the studied group, was a process constructed during life course, reflecting cultural and social local reality for which menopause experience means leaving womanhood behind

ASSUNTO(S)

antropologia cultural ethnography etnografia saúde da mulher cultural anthropology woman´s health menopausa menopause

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