Fears and concerns related to menstruation: a qualitative study from the perspective of gender

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the fears about menstruation and health that have been passed down to us by oral transmission from a gender perspective. A qualitative study, whose design was the Grounded Theory, performed in Seville, Spain, with 24 rural and urban women from different generations, young (18-25, 26-35 years), middle aged (36-45, 46-55, 56-65 years) and elderly (> 65 years). The semi-structured interview was used as a data collection technique. The discourses were subjected to content analysis, following the steps of Grounded Theory. The results highlight the abundant fears related to use of water during menstruation, with very harmful effects to health. As a conclusion to highlight the lack of women's knowledge about reproductive health and that despite Health Education campaigns there are still ancient misconceptions present about menstruation.

Experiences of menstruation in high income countries: A systematic review, qualitative evidence synthesis and comparison to low- and middle-income countries

“…Where healthcare workers did acknowledge the experience of pain and/or heavy bleeding they often expressed that menstrual symptoms were just a normal part of being a woman, or that the patient must have "a very low pain threshold" [pg. 45,71]. They either could not do anything for them or recommended painkillers [40,55,57,58,61,71,80,81,85,111,112,119,122,137].…”

“…Participants who had reached menarche in the early-mid 20 th C often indicated that they had not known what menstruation was at the time of their menarche [8, 38, 42, 56, 60, 65, 69, 72, 81, 87, 89, 93-97, 102, 109, 110, 116, 119, 120, 135]; in most cases this lack of knowledge led to distress when first bleeding was discovered. In the early 20 th C, adolescent participants were often instructed not to swim in cold water or wet their hair because they were incorrectly advised that it was physically dangerous to do so during menstrual bleeding [45,60,63,65,71,81,95].…”

“…There were often individuals who chose not, or were not allowed, to participate in certain activities. Those who reached menarche in the early to mid-20 th C were often banned from taking part in activities that were considered 'cold' (e.g., bathing or sitting on cold surfaces) because it was considered dangerous to their health [41,45,50,56,63,65,71,81,84,94,95,108]. Some individuals were not allowed to participate in religious practices whilst menstruating (within this review examples were given from those practicing Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam) [8,60,63,67,86,92,120], and some religions prohibited menstrual sex [67,86,105].…”

“…Where adolescent participants missed education during menstruation it was normally due to pain [8,32,34,49,56,58,61,64,65,71,80,87,99,103,122,127,129]. Many participants did not engage socially during menstruation [34,36,40,41,48,58,61,71,72,80,81,87,92,94,95,99,112,119,122,129,135]; some were not allowed to (normally by mothers) [36,38,41,45,65,71,72,[92][93][94]119]. Those who reached menarche in the early-mid 20 th C were often instructed not to inte...…”