Baumann Sara, Wegner Isabella M, Murthy Sanjana, Schneiderman Katarina, Winkler Inga T
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, 130 Desoto St, Pittsburgh, PA, 15228, USA.
University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, 139 University Pl, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2025 May;372:117992. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117992. Epub 2025 Mar 19.
Menstruation is a physiological process imbued with socio-cultural meaning. In the scholarship on menstrual health, culture is almost exclusively portrayed as oppression, limitation, and restriction, with cultural and religious practices in Nepal receiving growing attention. Our study aims to complement this body of literature by exploring menstrual practices among women of Nepali origin living in the United States, as migrant communities offer deep insights into cultural meaning-making but have been largely neglected in menstrual health literature. Drawing on feminist conceptions of agency, this study seeks to develop a nuanced understanding of Nepali immigrants' relationship with menstrual practices. In 2022, we conducted 22 semi-structured interviews and explored women's menstrual experiences and the tensions they navigate between the United States and Nepali contexts, investigating the role of identity, religious beliefs, cultural norms, societal expectations, respect for tradition, and sense of community. Our findings indicate that women largely relinquished menstrual practices that reach into the social sphere and everyday life. However, regarding practices in the religious sphere, women demonstrated significant variation: some abandoned these practices for pragmatic reasons or because they considered them discriminatory, whereas other women deliberately held on to religious practices motivated by their religious identity, respect for tradition, and sense of community. Thus, menstrual agency not only manifests in resisting cultural practices, but also in retaining them. Our findings challenge monolithic understandings of agency and acknowledge the nuance, complexity, and constraints that shape women's lived realities. These insights have significant implications for strengthening culturally responsive support for migrant women's health.
月经是一个充满社会文化意义的生理过程。在关于月经健康的学术研究中，文化几乎完全被描绘为压迫、限制和约束，尼泊尔的文化和宗教习俗受到了越来越多的关注。我们的研究旨在通过探索生活在美国的尼泊尔裔女性的月经习俗来补充这一文献体系，因为移民社区能为文化意义的构建提供深刻见解，但在月经健康文献中却 largely 被忽视。借鉴女性主义的能动性概念，本研究旨在对尼泊尔移民与月经习俗的关系形成细致入微的理解。2022年，我们进行了22次半结构化访谈，探讨了女性的月经经历以及她们在美国和尼泊尔背景之间所面临的紧张关系，调查了身份认同、宗教信仰、文化规范、社会期望、对传统的尊重以及社区意识的作用。我们的研究结果表明，女性在很大程度上摒弃了涉及社会领域和日常生活的月经习俗。然而，在宗教领域的习俗方面，女性表现出了显著差异：一些女性出于实际原因或认为这些习俗具有歧视性而放弃了这些习俗，而另一些女性则出于宗教身份认同、对传统的尊重和社区意识而刻意坚持宗教习俗。因此，月经能动性不仅体现在抵制文化习俗上，也体现在保留这些习俗上。我们的研究结果挑战了对能动性的单一理解，并承认了塑造女性生活现实的细微差别、复杂性和限制因素。这些见解对于加强对移民女性健康的文化适应性支持具有重要意义。
