Challenges in Challenging Menstrual Discourse: An Inquiry into the Nature of Dominating Social Discourse on Menstruation, and the Human Rights Agenda to Challenge its Effects

Sammanfattning: Recent developments have seen a rise in empirical attempts to challenge the persistently negative sociocultural attitudes toward menstruation. The thesis proposes a Foucauldian feminist conception, as well as the identification of the three elements stigmatization, medicalization and commercialization, to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework conceptualizing dominant menstrual discourse and its effects, based on which the empirical contemporary UN human rights agenda on the topic is approached. The findings, methodologically arrived at through the means of Directed Content Analysis, thereby generate both, an understanding of strengths and weaknesses in contemporary empirical attempts to challenge the effects of dominant menstrual discourse on women, and an exemplification of the utility of social science theory for human rights research in the realm of menstruation. Most importantly, the theoretical framework on dominant menstrual discourse indicates the need of holistically addressing all three formative elements, in order not to risk a perpetuation of its effects.