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Healthy Living and Keeping Busy

A Discourse Analysis of Mid-Aged Women's Attributions for Menopausal Experience

Massey University, New Zealand

Christine Stephens

Massey University, New Zealand

Menopause is a complex time in the lives of mid-aged women, and this contributes to the diversity of attributions of menopausal experience. In this study, participants' comments on a survey of attitudes about menopause were analyzed discursively to consider how mid-aged women account for their own and other women's experience of menopause. Two discourses drawn upon to make attributions about menopausal experience were identified. Women account for menopausal experience either by reporting a range of healthy habits such as good diet and exercise or by suggesting women can overcome menopause with a "get-on-with-it" approach to life. These discourses construct women as social actors within a moral order in which the absence of menopausal symptoms is an indicator of virtuous behavior, and health is a moral imperative. The way these attributions of menopausal experience position mid-aged women has important implications for women's self-image and health-seeking behaviors.

Key Words: menopause • women's health • attributions • discourse analysis

Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 2, 169-189 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X03022002002


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