With an increase in the survival rate and shift in the age composition of women, menopause is emerging as one of the major health issues in the sociology of health. Thanks to demographic transition, a sizeable number of women will now spend one-third to half of their life as post-menopausal. The present paper focuses upon the prevailing discourses on women’s menopausal health in the Indian setting. It suggests that though women’s health beliefs, behaviour and coping patterns in the Indian context differ from their Western counterparts, huge similarities are found in socio-cultural and medical discourses on menopause. In most of these discourses women are marginalised and seen as inferior to men. However, the epidemiological studies on women’s menopausal health in India suggest that menopause is a normal life event where menstruation ceases; it is not associated with the bio-psycho-social morbidity paradigm as prevalent in the West.

中文翻译：

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印度女性更年期健康展望

随着存活率的提高和女性年龄构成的变化，更年期正成为健康社会学中的主要健康问题之一。由于人口结构的转变，相当多的女性现在将有三分之一到一半的时间是在绝经后度过的。本论文侧重于印度环境中关于女性更年期健康的流行话语。这表明，尽管印度女性的健康信念、行为和应对方式与西方女性不同，但在更年期的社会文化和医学话语中发现了巨大的相似之处。在大多数这些话语中，女性被边缘化，被视为不如男性。然而，印度关于女性更年期健康的流行病学研究表明，更年期是月经停止的正常生活事件；