- 20 Minutes conducted, in partnership with the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), a survey on the rules under the pill, in three parts.
- The rules on the pill are false rules, which have no real medical utility, and one can just as easily take the pill continuously, say the doctors in unison. But then who invented them, these useless rules, and why? Is it dangerous to delete them? Why don't women do it more?
- In this third part, we look at the following question: why don't women stop menstruating more? A section that explores the various fears that cross this subject, from the fear of hormones to societal representations linked to what "must" be a "real" woman.
If the rules under the pill are generally useless, that they have no health benefit, or even increase the risk of being pregnant, and if there is no medical contraindication to suppress her rules, so why do women still agree to bleed every month when they take the pill?
We could understand that the latter hold to their rules, if they did not bother them: but this is not the case. According to a YouGov * survey for 20 Minutes , carried out in early October 2019, more than a third of the non-menopausal women who were interviewed have menstruation that is quite painful (33%) or even very painful (12%). Even those on hormonal contraception suffer from it (29% have fairly painful periods, 8% very painful). And overall, a majority of women are bothered by their periods, whether in their professional life (56%), their private life (67%) or their sex life (59%).
For Julie Ancian, a sociologist at EHESS who conducted this survey in partnership with 20 Minutes , the analysis of 350 testimonies addressed to 20 Minutes and in-depth interviews with women who have had their periods shed light on these results: “These women designate unequivocally their rules as a burden, even a hell and this, in many aspects of daily life. They describe the shame of the first period at school, the obsessive fear of spots, fatigue and sometimes disabling pain. It is also a mental burden in the sense that each month, for thirty years, you have to think about it and organize yourself to manage the constraints associated with it. "
Fear of the "chemical", valuing the "natural"
And yet, they are not so many who want to get rid of their monthly flows. Only 35% of premenopausal women would like to stop menstruating at all. And only 30% of women, of all women, have already voluntarily suppressed or postponed their period. A figure roughly in line with other older studies, with each time between a third and a half of women interested.
So,50% of women who have never postponed or deleted their period, interviewed in our YouGov survey, did not do so mainly because it does not seem "natural" to them and 23% for fear of negative health effects. The scandals around third generation pills have left their mark. Even if no study shows an increased danger of taking hormones continuously, compared to taking 21 days out of 28, there remains the idea that the less we take hormones, the better we are. And too bad if you have to suffer a little, and sometimes even stuff yourself with painkillers and various antispasmodics.
The baseless idea that it would be good to "evacuate"
In the studies carried out at the end of the 1970s, the majority of women were unfavorable to contraception inducing amenorrhea. If this conception has evolved a little, the idea remains that we must go through it. Menstruation is bothersome and uncomfortable, but it is ... inevitable, many women think: 42% of women in our survey therefore found it rather inconceivable or completely inconceivable to suppress menstruation using hormonal contraception.
To be healthy, you would have to bleed. "The body does not" cleanse "", worries Marie, in the call for testimonies launched by 20 Minutes , recalling the "bloodletting" very popular in the 17th century, which very often killed rather than healed. Observing Brazilian women in the state of Bahia, the anthropologist Emilia Sanabria noted that they became afraid, as soon as their periods no longer came, that blood would "accumulate" in the body: "The idea that blood can accumulate in a pathological way - formerly known as "plethora" - belongs to an ancient representation of the body, the humoral conception, which is still going on, "explains the researcher. "I suppose without having the certainty of it, that it remains good to" evacuate "via the rules and bleeding", thus reports one of the women in our call for testimonies.
Having your period is also associated with a certain image of femininity. “Following the implantation of a contraceptive implant, I no longer had a period for five years. I ended up no longer feeling "normal", no longer feeling female in the face of no longer having a cycle, "reports Manon. "I felt like I was losing some of what made me," says Emeline. "The idea that it is normal to have pain during your period is very significant in society," adds Julie Ancian. Women who suffer from dysmenorrhea - period pains - do not always seek medical help and many health professionals do not offer them anything, while solutions exist. "
Women in the dark
Some women also feel the need to have their period to "check" that they are not pregnant. "If you don't see your period coming, you can't be sure that you're not pregnant," explains Héloïse. However, one can very well have blood loss and be pregnant. And the seven-day interruption puts women more at risk of unplanned pregnancy compared to continuous use. But do women know it?
If in our YouGov survey, 62% of women say they know that hormonal contraception can space or suppress menstruation, and know "exactly what it is", 20% "do not know exactly what it is", and 19% ignore it completely ("No, I didn't know that"). So that's 40% of women who either ignore this possibility or have no clear idea. Even among women who take the pill continuously to suppress their periods, a lot of confusion remains, as with Carole, interviewed for this survey: "If the body releases this blood, it is because there is a reason. If he doesn't release him, I don't know where he's going. I'm still in doubt, I don't really know what impact it has on my body. ”
"We are really taken for quiches!" "
Information does not, or not completely, pass, especially from the side of health professionals. Only 15% of the women questioned in our YouGov panel were offered by a general practitioner or a gynecologist the possibility of eliminating their periods. A figure consistent with other studies, carried out in other countries. 90% of women had never heard of the abolition of menstruation by a gynecologist, according to a 2008 Spanish study. Only 6% of British women going to centers offering gynecological consultations had heard of it.
Professor at the University Hospital of Lille and member of the orthogeny commission of the National Council of Gynecologists (CNGOF), Brigitte Letombe affirms to have heard, in congresses, gynecologists who affirm "women cannot understand", or that "one cannot not explain to women that these are not real rules. " An ex-hospital director is even more cash: “We are not told about it at all when we are prescribed it, on the contrary the fact of interrupting the pill is presented as necessary. We are really taken for quiches! "
Doctors not always very open…
Some testimonies collected by 20 Minutes show a real reluctance from some and some doctors, even a form of misinformation: "I voluntarily suppressed my periods for, in all, nearly three years to avoid excruciating pain including I suffered every month which prevented me from going to school and to work. I heard about it from my gynecologist before, but he didn't agree at all. For him, a woman MUST have her period to be healthy, ”writes Camille for example. "My doctor refuses to prescribe anything that could cut my period, even temporarily," writes Chris. “My gynecologist has never been open to this subject. (…) So I always did this "behind his back", by managing to get my prescription renewed more often than necessary ", also relates Marjorie.
Things are changing a bit, according to doctor and essayist Martin Winckler, but "it's slow and long": "People who refuse to accept this kind of thing are stuck in an essentialist vision of what should to be a woman and how she should work. It is linked to the type of training. To renew a way of thinking it takes a lot of time. "
* YouGov RealTime study carried out from September 30 to October 9, 2019 with 2,104 French adults representative of the national female population aged 18 and over, according to the quota method.
To complete our dossier “What if we do without it? », Find two other articles in the EHESS PLACES project notebook.
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Post-partum taboo is slowly crumbling, but much remains to be done to support mothers
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Rules: Two deputies file a report to make them less "generating anxiety and suffering"
20 seconds of context
This series of articles is part of the PLACES project, initiated by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales (EHESS) and coordinated by the OpenEdition Center, a collaborative research project between journalists and researchers. The ambition, according to Alessia Smaniotto, research engineer at EHESS and coordinator of the project, is "to offer a way out of the dead ends of a current situation, which positions the figures of the journalist and the researcher in two compartmentalized worlds".
To this end, three pilot projects have been selected in partnership with three media: research on young Alzheimer's patients, with Binge Audio, work on what migrations do in border towns with Café Babel and the survey of 20 Minutes on hormonal contraception, conducted with sociologist Julie Ancian, post-doctoral fellow at EHESS, today at Inserm. Through these three binomials, themselves observed during their work, the idea is to constitute a toolbox facilitating this type of collaboration, in order, ultimately, to create a larger platform for joint work.
The PLACES project is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, coordinated by Pierre Mounier and Alessia Smaniotto, research engineer and study engineer respectively at EHESS. Alexandra Caria and Jonathan Chibois, post-doctoral researchers at EHESS for the PLACES project, studied communication and socio-professional practices as well as the digital uses of pairs of journalists and researchers, through observations and interviews.
- Blood
- Rules
- Contraceptive pill
- Contraception
- Health