The trouble with white pants: medicalisation and agency in the context of menstrual suppression

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the multi-sited construction of meanings associated with the use of Extended Cycle Oral Contraception (ECOC), a practice that results in the extended or continual suppression of menstruation. In particular it centres on the public debates surrounding the United States of America Food and Drug Administration approval of the first ECOC called Seasonale in 2003. Rather than framing ECOC as simply a forward trajectory of biomedical technologies, or as a medical 'take-over' of another aspect of women's bodies, it examines the ways in which the significances of ECOC are negotiated through discursive practices within and across fields. This thesis is primarily concerned with reviewing the sociological concept of 'medicalisation' in such a context.