Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Chapter 7 examines the way in which the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) study participants appeared limited in their ability to describe healthy (pre)menstrual physiology. The first part discusses the patients’ lack of knowledge regarding the menstrual cycle. The second part examines the way in which the experts tended to reduce the menstrual cycle to hormonal changes only. It is argued that this reduction may contribute to the group’s tendency to conflate symptom correlation with ‘hormonal’ causation and to position contradictory data as due to the ‘mysterious’ female reproductive system, rather than alternative physiological explanations. The third part describes some other factors that further limited the expert accounts of PMS. The chapter ends with a summary of content and a ‘why this matters’ overview.
Chapter 8 makes some conclusions about the themes identified in the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) study data and what they mean for women’s health research and practice more widely. The first part outlines how and why the participant descriptions of PMS reflect three key societal gender myths more than the available population data. The second part summarises the wider implications of these findings and makes some suggestions for improving women’s health research and associated clinical practice. The book ends with an urgent call to action: we must improve menstrual health literacy if we are ever to alleviate female prevalent symptoms and conditions, and successfully counter the myth of the hysterical hormonal female.
Chapter 6 illustrates how gender myths informed participant descriptions of the cause(s), prevalence and management of Premenstrual Syndrome, as well as the prioritisation of certain premenstrual changes over others. The first part focuses on the positioning of the female sex hormones as the main cause of debilitating cyclical symptoms, contrary to the available scientific data. The second part describes the way in which certain types of premenstrual change, and medical treatments, were prioritised due to pervasive gender norms. The third section examines how the participants exaggerated the prevalence and number of premenstrual symptoms, which (unintentionally) implies that the female (reproductive) body is inherently debilitating. The chapter ends with a summary of content and a ‘why this matters’ overview.
Chapter 2 explains how the myth of the hormonal premenstrual female came to be and how it (unintentionally) influences medical accounts of female ill-health. Specifically, how an ancient medical tendency to attribute female-prevalent symptoms to ‘femininity’ itself (first the womb, then the ‘female psyche’, now the sex hormones) continues to act as an unacknowledged metaphor within clinical and popular discourses. The chapter summarises both the biomedical and critical literatures on hysteria and Premenstrual Syndrome, to provide the historical and intellectual context to the present study.
The introduction provides some useful contextual information about why this book is needed, why now, and why the author is a qualified and motivated menstrual health and rights researcher. It also positions this work in relation to recent developments within the menstrual activism and research space. The introduction concludes with a brief overview of the book content by chapter.
In this book, Sally King interrogates the diagnostic label of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) to expose and challenge sexist assumptions within medical research and practice. She powerfully demonstrates how the concept of the ‘hormonal’ premenstrual woman is merely the latest iteration of the ‘hysterical’ female myth. By blaming the healthy reproductive body (first our wombs, now our hormones) for the female-prevalence of emotional distress and physical pain, gender myths appear to have trumped all empirical evidence to the contrary.
The book also provides a primer on menstrual physiology beyond hormones, and a short history of how hormonal metaphors came to dominate medical and popular discourses. The author calls for clinicians, researchers, educators, and activists to help improve women’s health without unintentionally reproducing damaging stereotypes.
Chapter 4 is about the way in which the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) study participants tended to position premenstrual changes as psychological rather than physical phenomena. The first part looks at how and why the expert participants prioritised emotional distress, given that the patients described predominantly physical changes, in line with the available population data. The second part examines the positioning of premenstrual changes as more psychological than physical in origin and experience. The third part describes the way in which PMS was positioned in relation to Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. The chapter ends with a summary of content and a ‘why this matters’ overview.
The first chapter outlines some basic menstrual physiology that should be taught in all schools but is not. The true purpose of periods, why we experience premenstrual changes, and how this better explains and reframes all female-prevalent symptoms and conditions, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth and the menopause, may shock the reader because it fundamentally challenges pervasive gender myths. Try to keep calm and read the chapter in full before examining any emotional response you may experience. It is perfectly normal to feel anger, disbelief, or confusion when confronted with this ‘new’ information. Rest assured, it is all evidence-based and thoroughly peer-reviewed.
Chapter 5 looks at how the Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) study participants described the relationship between non-pathological premenstrual changes and debilitating cyclical symptoms (typically indicative of an underlying condition). A discursive paradox is identified, which simultaneously implies that ‘all women’ are necessarily debilitated by the female reproductive body while also minimising individual experiences of severe cyclic symptoms. The third part of the chapter argues that the use of ‘normal curve’ analogies, and the categorisation of severe physical symptoms as something other than PMS, unintentionally creates the ‘snatch-22’ paradox (as well as the belief that premenstrual changes are predominantly psychological in nature). The chapter ends with a summary of content and a ‘why this matters’ overview.
