It´s the hormones. Women in transitions through hormone narratives

It´s the hormones: Women in transitions through hormone narrativesWhat do stories about hormones do to our contemporary understanding of women?

The purpose of the project is to study how hormones are ascribed significance in popular understandings, and narrations of transitional periods in women´s lives.

More particularly, the aim is to explore hormone narratives as part of contemporary self-help culture, where the hormonal body has become a popular object of discussions and regulatory practices. Hormones are part of a growing self-help industry, with a high pressure on optimizing "human capital". A critical examination of its effects is necessary, and something that the project will contribute to.

The project will be conducted by an interdisciplinary research group of three gender scholars, with vast experience of research on self-help, narratives, ageing, temporality and gender normativity.

To get answers on the overall question the study will include group-interviews with women as well as media material and self-help books.

The research group will work in close collaboration and write five articles, including one special issue on hormone narratives. The results will be presented in research- and popular science contexts.

Working from the supposition that knowledge in all its forms have real effects, the project contributes with knowledge about how hormone narratives structure women´s everyday practice and self-understandings.