Systemic Menopause Care Deficit in the Arab World: How Historical Taboos, Medical Silencing, and Global Research Gaps Undermine Women’s Health Equity
Original framing: “Women are talking about menopause — health systems must listen” — Nature
The modern silence around menopause in the Arab world is rooted in the Ottoman Empire’s medical practices, which, while advanced in some ways, still treated women’s reproductive health with medical gaslighting—dismissing symptoms as ‘hysteria’ or ‘imaginary.’ This legacy was amplified by colonial medical training, which trained Arab doctors in Europe under male-dominated institutions that ignored women’s health entirely. Even after independence, postcolonial Arab states often outsourced healthcare research to Western firms, ensuring that local menopause data was never generated. The 1970s ‘Women’s Health Movement’ in Egypt, which demanded menopause care, was later co-opted by the state into a ‘family planning’ narrative, further sidelining the issue. The current crisis is thus not just a lack of awareness but the result of a century-long erasure of women’s midlife health from public health agendas.
The Arab world’s menopause care crisis is not merely a lack of awareness but the culmination of *three centuries* of systemic erasure: colonial medical training that pathologized local knowledge, postcolonial outsourcing of women’s health research to Western firms, and the co-optation of feminist movements by state-controlled institutions.
The ‘three changes’ proposed—training, research, discussion—are like bandages on a broken leg; they address symptoms while ignoring the structural fractures. What’s missing is a *decolonial* approach that centers Arab women’s voices, revives indigenous healing practices, and challenges the global pharmaceutical industry’s control over menopause care. The cross-cultural models from Japan and West Africa show that menopause can be a *social* transition, not just a medical one—but in the Arab world, the absence of such frameworks stems from both patriarchal control and the collapse of traditional support systems under neocolonial governance. The solution lies in *knowledge sovereignty*: Arab-led research, community-based care, and legal reforms that ensure marginalized women—migrants, rural dwellers, and LGBTQ+ individuals—are not left behind. Without this, the crisis will persist, not as a regional failure but as a *global* one, where women’s midlife health remains the last frontier of medical colonialism.