Design research for menopause: a scoping review

Abstract

More than half the global population experience menopause, of which a significant number are in part-time or full-time employment. Research on labour force participation reports that employment is often interrupted during the menopausal transition due to difficulties accessing timely medical support and social discrimination. These interruptions result in the loss of professional expertise for employers and financial security for employees. To identify the characteristics of and gaps in design research for menopause we conducted a scoping review of the literature. We sourced and analysed 24 articles, mapping them according to their alignment with three conceptual framings of menopause from the sociology of medicine; a medicalized condition requiring pharmacological treatment, a natural life stage that is managed with complementary therapies, and a demedicalized issue where illness and health are framed as always socially situated. We found that the articles on menopause were relatively evenly distributed across the medicalized and demedicalized framings, with fewer developed within a natural framing. Our findings offer design researchers an overview of frameworks that are commonly used in health research and that we see as productive for further multidisciplinary research collaborations for menopause, and for research concerning the intersections of gender, sexualities, ageing and health more broadly.

Keywords:

• Design research
• HCI design
• menopause transition
• women’s health and ageing
• social design

Acknowledgements

Katherine Moline gratefully acknowledges funding for this research provided by the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture Research Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Both authors thank the reviewers for their incisive comments that helped strengthen the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture Research Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Notes on contributors

Katherine Moline

Katherine Moline is Associate Professor at UNSW Arts, Design and Architecture. Her research focuses on the dynamics between technological and social forces in art and design. Her analyses of experimental design are published in Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design (Routledge, 2018) and Food Democracy: Critical Lessons in Food, Communication, Design and Art (Intellect, 2017). Her innovations in research methods have been documented in Uncertainty and Possibility: New Approaches to Future Making in Design Anthropology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography (Routledge, 2017). Katherine led the curatorial team for the touring exhibition The Data Imaginary: Fears and Fantasies, for Griffith University Art Museum with Angela Goddard, Amanda Hayman and Troy Casey (Blaklash Creative), and Beck Davis.

Teena Clerke

Teena Clerke is the Project Officer for the Maternal and Women’s Clinical Academic Group of Maridulu Budyari Gumal, SPHERE and currently works as a researcher on a number of projects, including women’s lived experiences of the peri-/menopause transition, maternity care clinician training in shared decision making around the timing of birth, and critical thinking in the context of transdisciplinary learning and inquiry. Her professional background is in visual communication design in the business, government and community sectors, exhibiting art (30 years), and lecturing in the fields of design, art and curatorial, adult education, workplace learning, public communications and global studies (25 years). Her research experience spans studies in primary health, child and family health, higher, doctoral and transdisciplinary education, and engineering workplace learning (15 years). Her PhD focused on women rewriting design scholarship as they move from navigating gendered practices in design to those in the university setting.