Lifting the Curse of Menstruation

A Feminist Appraisal of the Influence of Menstruation on Women's Lives

Sharon Golub

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780918393067
• eBook ISBN: 9781317959724
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Here is an up-to-date view of menstruation from a feminist perspective. Despite the fact that the menstrual cycle is an integral part of women's lives, menstruation is often viewed as an illness or problem. Lifting the Curse of Menstruation answers essential questions about the occurence of menstruation—from menarch to menopause—and its effects on women's lives. Experts examine the relationship of menstruation to cognitive competence and psychophysiological response, premenstrual syndrome, toxic shock syndrome, dysmenorrhea, and the relationship between psychopathology and the menstrual cycle. The contributors also discuss how menstrual cycle research has been tainted by sexism and assumptions of biological determinism, offering insightful suggestions on how future research can become more sophisticated, reliable, and valid. Lifting the Curse of Menstruation shatters myths and misconceptions, providing an enormous body of knowledge about the menstrual cycle that will help women to better understand their bodies and enable health care professinals to provide better informed, higher quality care.

How Does Menstruation Affect Cognitive Competence and Psychophysiological Response?

Barbara Sommer, PhD

ABSTRACT. Studies of the effect of the menstrual cycle on standardized cognitive tasks, work and academic performance, perceptual-motor performance, and psychophysiological measures are reviewed. The weight of the evidence argues against a menstrual cycle effect on behavior. Studies of self report and of behaviors reflecting self confidence suggest that beliefs of menstrual debilitation remain in the population. Studies of atypical and deviant groups indicate a possible connection between behavior and the menstrual cycle.

Havoc produced by raging hormones is a joke to many. Yet, as a metaphor for the presumed effect of the menstrual cycle on female behavior, the raging hormone hypothesis lives. Brought to public attention in 1970 by a presidential candidate's physician (Barnes, 1971), raging hormones became the "female glandular system" in a Latin American diplomat's verbal attack on Prime Minister Thatcher concerning her response to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands (Isla Malvinas) in 1982. Concern about menstrual effects on behavior continues in legal circles with the premenstrual syndrome defense, of long use in France, and currently revived in Great Britain and the United States. The increasing employment of women outside the home has stimulated scientific research on the effects of menstruation. The old questions are disinterred with each cycle of concern for women's rights. Because the menstrual cycle is such a clear biologically distinguishing feature between the sexes, its correlates, concomitants, accompaniments, and ramifications, and implications have become intrinsically bound up with issues of gender equality.

Current Beliefs

We have become more open in our discussion of menstruation. The occurrence of the Toxic Shock Syndrome has done much to break down the secrecy and taboos surrounding menstruation; although at the same time has reinforced an ages-old myth of menstruation as dangerous. In 1981 the Tampax Corporation, a manufacturer of tampons, commissioned a study of attitudes toward menstruation and awareness of Toxic Shock Syndrome (The Tampax Report, 1981). The report is based on a survey of 1,034 Americans, a representative sample of the population over age 14. Interviews were done by telephone. Some of the items measured beliefs about the restrictions of menstruation. Selected questions and responses are shown in Table 1.

Survey results indicated that women are perceived as more emotional while menstruating, but not as less able to think, to work, or to engage in regular physical activities. However, a sizeable minority believe women cannot function normally while menstruating. Looking closely at Table 1, one sees that 35 percent believe menstruation affects a woman's ability to think and 26 percent believe women cannot function as well at work when menstruating.

Overall, there was a high level of agreement between the attitudes of men and women. However, one-third of the males surveyed disagreed with the statement that women can function as well at work while they're menstruating, compared with nineteen percent

Table 1
SELECTED ITEMS AND RESPONSE RATES FROM THE TAMPAX SURVEY, ITEM 11

	Agree Strongly	Tend to Agree	Tend to Disagree	Disagree Strongly
Women are more emotional when they are menstruating.	58	29	8	5
Women can function as well at work when they're menstruating.	48	26	17	9
Menstruation does not affect a woman's ability to think.	48	17	17	18
Women do not need to restrict their physical activities while menstruating.	44	25	20	10

of the females surveyed. While impairment is a minority view, these percentages represent a substantial number of individuals. If applied to the total U.S. population, they indicate that over 45 million Americans believe that women cannot function as well at work while menstruating, and over 60 million believe menstruation affects a woman's ability to think. It is important to point out that these figures represent a belief in impairment but not necessarily total debilitation. Respondents felt there was an effect, but the strength of the effect was not measured (see wording of the possible responses in Table 1).

While 87 percent agreed with the statement that women are more emotional while menstruating, when asked specifically about their last menstrual period (males were asked about wife/girlfriend's last period), 42 percent reported no mood changes or changes in personality during menstruation, and 58 percent said no such changes occurred during the week preceding menstruation.

The issue of whether or not menstrual cycle variables have a negative effect on women's thinking and on work behavior can be reduced to a series of factual questions:

• What is the evidence for impairment in thinking?
• What is the evidence for menstrual impairment in actual performance?
• What do laboratory studies reveal about the effect of menstruation on sensory and motor processes?
• Is there validity to the claims of increased psychopathology such as mental breakdown and criminal behavior around the time of menstruation?

There is a general bias in the research literature which favors the report of positive findings. Studies accepting the null hypothesis are treated with skepticism by editors. Most studies are designed to present and support specific hypotheses. Their rejection is often of little note. Otherwise, one could devise preposterous hypotheses, show that they are not confirmed, and publish the results. While in many areas it is reasonable to keep the literature clear of such studies, work on the menstrual cycle is of another sort. As the usual hypotheses tested are of some alteration, often of a decrement in performance, and have important implications for generalizations about women, publication of results failing to document change are of equal importance. Within the last ten years more studies have been published which report no phase effects. Yet, in doing this review I found a number of unpublished studies (some are listed in Table 3), most of them dissertations. Nearly all of them failed to document cyclic differences in performance. One wonders how many other studies rejecting the hypothesis of premenstrual and menstrual change have never reached print. It is possible that the reports of the cyclic fluctuation simply represent the one-in-twenty chance (using the .05 level of significance) of positive findings resulting from sampling error and other chance variation.

Standardized Cognitive Tasks and Perceptual-Motor Performance

There have been numerous studies of the effects of the menstrual cycle on standardized cognitiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Lifting the Curse of Menstruation: Toward a Feminist Perspective on the Menstrual Cycle
• Menarche: The Beginning of Menstrual Life
• Menstrual Health Products, Practices, and Problems
• How Does Menstruation Affect Cognitive Competence and Psychophysiological Response?
• Dysmenorrhea
• Premenstrual Syndrome: A Selective Review
• The Relationship between Psychopathology and the Menstrual Cycle
• Menopause: The Closure of Menstrual Life