Women’s Health: Methods and Ethics

Women researchers working in the area of women's health face a number of problems in representing the views of the women who participate in their research. The most fundamental concerns for the researcher are to protect the interests of the group being studied, to ensure that its members are not harmed and to ensure that the findings are valid. The emphasis on medical treatment of this transition threatens to obscure analysis of the way in which women negotiate it. In the case of women in midlife, there has been little formal community organisation and there is the additional problem that women may not wish to identify themselves as menopausal because of negative cultural attitudes to menopause. Many midlife women turn to medical journals for their information about menopause, but the wider needs of the 'community' are likely to be best served by less formal means of communicating results.