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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today we talk about menopause, biologically inevitable and for a long time, a taboo topic.

Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Martha Hickey, an expert who works in Melbourne, Australia,

about the need to stop talking about menopause as a medical disorder, and instead think more

broadly about how to educate women about what to

expect and to reduce the dual stigmas of gender bias and ageism. Let's listen.

Martha Hickey, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you. I want to start with an easy question,

but maybe it's not so easy. What is menopause and why don't we

talk about it more? The metapause is the final period that a woman ever has. So it's kind of a

difficult thing to know because for those who have had a hysterectomy, for example, or using a hormonal

contraception or don't have regular periods anyway orerectomy, for example, or using hormonal contraception,

or don't have regular periods anyway, or, you know, there are so many reasons why somebody may

not know when their menopause actually happen. So we tend not to use that term and talk about

the menopause transition to try and encompass the time of changes that people notice.

So why is it something we don't hear a lot about?

Like a lot of things to do with women's reproduction,

menopause has been associated with shame and with stigma.

Something we try and really go to in Lancet papers

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