By Paddy Kamen, Publisher, BetterBrainBetterLife.com
Science has now ‘proven’ what women have known all along: the ability to remember is affected by menopause.
Maybe I’m uber-sensitive (after all, I am post-menopausal), but the tone of the news release about this research strikes me as a tad sexist. The headline reads, “It’s not your imagination: Memory gets muddled at menopause.” How many women of a certain age have been told that their very real symptoms or experiences are, in fact, figments of their imaginations? This type of language (and attitude) about women’s health-related experience has been with us for some time. Was the news release written by a man? Who approved it?
Science has now ‘proven’ what women have known all along: the ability to remember is affected by menopause.
Maybe I’m uber-sensitive (after all, I am post-menopausal), but the tone of the news release about this research strikes me as a tad sexist. The headline reads, “It’s not your imagination: Memory gets muddled at menopause.” How many women of a certain age have been told that their very real symptoms or experiences are, in fact, figments of their imaginations? This type of language (and attitude) about women’s health-related experience has been with us for some time. Was the news release written by a man? Who approved it?
The release’s opening sentence reads: “Don’t doubt it when a woman harried by hot flashes says she’s having a hard time remembering things.” Does this tone strike you as condescending? In their study of 68 women, the researchers came to the conclusion that: “Women who said they had trouble with memory really did.” Oh,really? They don’t provide any stats about the degree of memory difficulty, which would be more helpful than telling us that it ‘really did’ happen.
I hope that the North American Menopause Society can in future write their news releases in language that respects the history of women’s oppression by the medical community (and for a humorous take on this oppression I recommend the film “Hysteria”. We might as well laugh.).
The results will be published in December 2013 in the print edition of Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society. It will be ‘hot’ off the presses…eventually.
I hope that the North American Menopause Society can in future write their news releases in language that respects the history of women’s oppression by the medical community (and for a humorous take on this oppression I recommend the film “Hysteria”. We might as well laugh.).
The results will be published in December 2013 in the print edition of Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society. It will be ‘hot’ off the presses…eventually.
