Intermission: Women, Menopause and Midlife Book

This is a book about the experience and consequences of menopause. It is a story about transition, the ways in which women's lives are irrevocably transformed by the change of menopause, the changes in midlife. Menopause, the authors show, is not the drama but the intermission, the pause in a continuing performance. Intermission is based on a three-year NH&MRC survey of women's experience of midlife. The book is unusual in several regards, principally the extensive interview material with women which offers a vast store of unique and vivid pictures of women's experiences. The women offer frank, often wry accounts of the experiences of menopause and the broader implications for work, relationships, families and identity. The work is designed as a collection, representing myriad voices. Intermission fills a major gap. While there is a burgeoning literature aimed at instructing women about their midlife health or persuading them to confront the subject positively, there is a dearth of data-informed writing about their experience, and virtually nothing that allows women's voices to be heard. It challenges, among other things, almost all of the stereotypes of midlife and both the current feminist and biomedical perspectives.Read More