Mindy J. Erchull, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychological Science at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) in Fredericksburg, VA
When and why did you join the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research?
I joined SMCR during my senior year of college (1997-98). I was a student of Joan Chrisler’s, a long-time SMCR member, doing an honor’s thesis under her supervision analyzing educational booklets girls received about menstruation. I attended my first SMCR conference in 1999 to present my findings. I maintained my membership throughout graduate school where I earned my PhD in Social Psychology from Arizona State University (2005) focusing on women’s health. I began attending conferences again in 2009, once I had a research program established at UMW.
Which researcher or paper influenced or inspired you to pursue research in this area? Why?
There was no one paper that inspired me, but Joan Chrisler is the person I can point to. As a researcher who studied PMS and other menstrual cycle topics, she made it clear that this was a viable path to follow. I’ve continued to explore menstrual cycle topics in my research because I feel it is an understudied area. Moreover, I feel it is a research area that often does not receive respect or is dismissed as unimportant.
What are the primary areas of your menstrual cycle research?
An interest in how we educate about menstruation led me to my initial study looking at 50 years worth of educational booklets girls were often given around menarche. In grad school, my research focused on women’s decision making about using/not using post-menopausal hormone therapy. Since I completed my PhD, I’ve explored the attitudes of health care professionals towards menstruation and PMS as well as how women are depicted in ads for menstrual products (e.g., pads and tampons). In recent years, I’ve returned to my initial interest in attitudes about the menstrual cycle but have shifted my focus to the attitudes of men. Menstrual cycle research is not my primary line of research (that has largely focused on the objectification and sexualization of women), so I feel able to move to new topics as I am inspired.
Where can our blog visitors go to read your work on menstruation?
My honor’s thesis exploring commercially produced educational booklets about menstruation was published in The Journal of Early Adolescence in 2002.
My research exploring how women’s bodies are depicted in advertisements for menstrual products was published in Sex Roles in 2013.
In 2015, my research exploring the role of fathers in menstrual education of both daughters and sons was published in SMCR’s journal, Women’s Reproductive Health.
What is the most interesting, important or applicable thing your research has revealed about women’s experience of menstruation?
I continue to be struck by the fact that in my investigation of how women were depicted in menstrual product advertisements, representations of women were often not included in these ads. This despite the fact that menstrual products are inherently related to women’s bodies and the fact that women’s bodies are so often included in ads for every other product under the sun.
What is your current research or work in this area?
I currently have two projects in various stages of completion. One, undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Kate Richmond, explored young men’s attitudes about menstruation and the relationship of these attitudes to their endorsement of traditional masculinity. We hope to prepare this for publication in the coming year. The other project is exploring the measurement of menstrual cycle attitudes by revisiting the statistical properties of a measure developed by Dr. Maria Luisa Marván and colleagues. I am not yet sure where this project will go, but I look forward to exploring the data in the coming months.
How has the field of menstrual cycle research changed since you entered this area?
I don’t believe the field has changed that much. I would say that menstrual cycle research, particularly within the realm of the social sciences, is still not particularly well respected. I also think that more medicalized research about the menstrual cycle continues to be the mainstay for the discipline (albeit not within SMCR).
What else would you like our readers to know about the value, importance or influence of menstrual cycle research?
To advance knowledge about and understanding of the menstrual cycle, we need high quality research from a wide array of disciplines. Research can inform us about what are typical and less common experiences and about how attitudes and behaviors are/are not changing. Research can let us draw firm conclusions rather than being speculative and draw on data from many rather than the unique experiences of a few. This is why I have always chosen to maintain my membership in and involvement with a research-focused interdisciplinary organization like SMCR.
For information on becoming a member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research contact us by email: info@menstruationresearch.org. Subject line: Membership.
