How Did Menopause Get Medicalized?

Boy, are we living in wild and crazy times! When it comes to women's healthcare, our heads are spinning. We're getting whiplash from the changes to just about every aspect of women's healthcare from insurance reimbursements to prescriptions.

But joining us is someone who can help clear this all up for us, touching on the past and looking towards the future of women's health care in the United States. Elizabeth Watkins became Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor at UC Riverside in May 2021. Her research focuses on the interrelations of medicine, science, commerce, and culture in the U.S. in the twentieth—twenty-first centuries, and she has published on the topics of the history of prescription drugs; birth control; estrogen and female aging; testosterone and male aging; and stress and disease.

Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education. She is the author of On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives and The Estrogen Elixir: A History of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America.

She sits down with Dr. Pam to discuss her career in this field of study, the devaluing of older women in America, and our cultural devotion to youth culture.