Parsing the ageing Asian woman: symptom results from the China study of midlife women.
OBJECTIVE
It has become popular to assert that Asian women in general have low midlife rates of reporting a wide variety of symptoms and that these rates are much lower than those found among women in western countries. Comparable data from mainland China remains sparse, however. This study aimed to uncover the symptom reporting frequency for a general population sample of women in mainland China and to compare these results with rates from similar studies conducted in Japan and North America.


METHODS
The author conducted a community-based survey of over 400 Chinese women aged 40-65 years living in a rural village and an urban neighborhood in northern China. The cross-cultural analysis was conducted on the 156 Chinese women within that sample who were between the ages of 45 and 55 years. Their rates of reporting 16 core symptoms in the previous 2 weeks were compared with those of women in the same age range in studies conducted in Japan [Lock M. Encounters with aging: mythologies of menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1993], Canada [Kaufert P, Lock M, McKinlay S, et al. Menopause research: the Korpilampi workshop. Soc Sci Med 1986;22(11):1285-9], and the U.S. [McKinlay SM, McKinlay JB. Research note: aging in a 'healthy' population. Soc Sci Med 1986;23(5):531-5].


RESULTS
The Chinese women had a low to moderate rate (below 50%) of reporting each of the 16 core symptoms. On most symptoms, the Chinese rates were higher than the Japanese and more similar to the North American. The only exceptions were hot flashes and headaches.


CONCLUSIONS
Data from the China Study of Midlife Women showed that women's rates of midlife core symptom reporting in mainland China differ from the extremely low levels found in Japan. It is important to avoid generalizations about East Asian women relative to North American women in this regard.
Department of Anthropology, 515 Williams Hall, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. JLSHEA@uvm.edu
Jeanne L
JL
Shea
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D044466:Asian People; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D019584:Hot Flashes / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D008593:Menopause; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires