Whose rhythms? Rhythmic agency, rhythmic justice, and circadian health in the menopausal transition
- 1School of Public Health Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Abstract
Sleep disturbance and circadian disruption affect 40–60% of women during the menopausal transition, yet public health guidance continues to frame circadian health primarily as a matter of individual behaviour. This commentary argues that such guidance assumes a degree of control over time, light, and rest that many women do not have. Drawing on chronobiology and feminist scholarship on time, we introduce rhythmic agency, the capacity to shape the environmental and temporal conditions that regulate circadian rhythms, as a framework for understanding why women frequently cannot act on behavioural framed advice in everyday life. We extend this with rhythmic justice, which examines how that capacity is unevenly distributed across caregiving roles, occupational demands, and built environments. Together, these concepts reposition circadian disruption during the menopausal transition as a problem of social organisation rather than individual regulation. We close by outlining research directions and policy levers, including work scheduling, nighttime communication norms, urban lighting, and caregiving support, that follow from treating circadian health as a socially distributed capacity.
Related
- Pluripotency and Transcriptional Pausing Disrupt Circadian Rhythms to Facilitate the Enrichment of Cancer Stem Cells
- Circadian rhythms in health and disease.
- Encapsulated Leptin‐Producing Cells Facilitate Entrainment of Circadian Rhythms in Rodents and Nonhuman Primates
- Selection on PER2 Phosphorylation Regulation Underlies Atypical Mammalian Circadian Rhythms
- Polycystic ovary syndrome and menopausal transition: Hormonal dynamics, phenotypic evolution, and ethnic considerations
BibTeX
@article{ndu2026whose,
title = {{Whose rhythms? Rhythmic agency, rhythmic justice, and circadian health in the menopausal transition}},
author = {Mary Ntochuwku Ndu and Ehinomen C. Oko-Oboh and Ailin Jalili and Charity Oga-Omenka},
journal = {Women's Health},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1177/17455057261491528},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1177/17455057261491528},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Whose rhythms? Rhythmic agency, rhythmic justice, and circadian health in the menopausal transition
AU - Mary Ntochuwku Ndu
AU - Ehinomen C. Oko-Oboh
AU - Ailin Jalili
AU - Charity Oga-Omenka
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/20
JO - Women's Health
DO - 10.1177/17455057261491528
UR - https://doi.org/10.1177/17455057261491528
AB - Sleep disturbance and circadian disruption affect 40–60% of women during the menopausal transition, yet public health guidance continues to frame circadian health primarily as a matter of individual behaviour. This commentary argues that such guidance assumes a degree of control over time, light, and rest that many women do not have. Drawing on chronobiology and feminist scholarship on time, we introduce rhythmic agency, the capacity to shape the environmental and temporal conditions that regulate circadian rhythms, as a framework for understanding why women frequently cannot act on behavioural framed advice in everyday life. We extend this with rhythmic justice, which examines how that capacity is unevenly distributed across caregiving roles, occupational demands, and built environments. Together, these concepts reposition circadian disruption during the menopausal transition as a problem of social organisation rather than individual regulation. We close by outlining research directions and policy levers, including work scheduling, nighttime communication norms, urban lighting, and caregiving support, that follow from treating circadian health as a socially distributed capacity.
SN - 1745-5057
SN - 1745-5065
ER -