Menopause
The menopause transition typically begins between 40 and 50 years of age (average 47.5). The duration of perimenopause may be for up to eight years. Women will often, but not always, start these transitions (perimenopause and menopause) about the same time as their mother did.
Germaine Greer
Natalie Angier, writing in "The New York Times", called "The Change: Women, Ageing, and the Menopause" (1991) a "brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book ... tantalizingly close to being a potential feminist classic on a par with "The Female Eunuch"." In it, Greer writes of the myths about menopause—or as she prefers to call it the "climacteric", or critical period. "Frightening females is fun," she wrote in "The Age" in 2002. "Women were frightened into using hormone replacement therapy by dire predictions of crumbling bones, heart disease, loss of libido, depression, despair, disease and death if they let nature take its course." She argues that scaring women is "big business and hugely profitable". The book, including the medical information, was updated and reissued in 2018.