My guess is that if the relevant committee had included more women, it might have been “perimenopause”, which wasn’t a word until recently. The vocabulary of this sorry tale is revealing: women – apparently all women – need “hormone replacement therapy”, as if the natural body has broken down and must be “replaced” by pharmacology. I have friends who do take HRT and friends who don’t and until we talk about it you wouldn’t know the difference. (No replacement for randomised controlled trials, obviously; you’d hope those who do are the ones who need it and those who don’t, don’t.) These are potentially, if you’re lucky, years of relative freedom and strength and opportunity, which is why patriarchy loathes women in midlife.

Source: The Irish Times January 05, 2026 12:56 UTC