Researching the researchers : the impact of menstrual stigma on the study of menstruation
Abstract
Menstruation has been stigmatised through a variety of strategies cross-culturally, including silencing and marginalisation. The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the perceived nature and impact of such stigmatisation on the professional experience of menstrual researchers. The research cohort was a group of nine scholars from humanities and social science disciplines working together on a research project on menstruation in politics. I was a member of the group and this paper is structured through an autoethnographic enquiry. My qualitative research was interview-based using online video meetings. The data shows that the perceived impact of menstrual stigma on academic research has altered, with older researchers experiencing more barriers in the early stages of their careers than younger ones do now. However, menstrual researchers still experience challenges they consider to be stigma-related in publishing menstrual research, obtaining permanent positions centred on their specialisation, and attracting long-term and large-scale funding. This research details the impact of multiple effects of stigma upon the careers of menstrual researchers and demonstrates the relationship between stigma and capitals. When exacerbated by contemporary precarity, undertaking menstrual research can lead to a feedback loop from which it is difficult to escape, suggesting that academics working on stigmatised topics may need specific types of institutional support in order to progress, publish and flourish. This article contributes to critical menstrual studies, stigma studies, and autoethnographic methods.
Citation
Owen , L 2022 , ' Researching the researchers : the impact of menstrual stigma on the study of menstruation ' , Open Library of Humanities , vol. 8 , no. 1 . https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.6338
Publication
Open Library of Humanities
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2056-6700Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
Funding: Royal Society of Edinburgh.Collections
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