To think that menopause talks at work might not be an entirely good thing?

[Wonderbug81]

We had a talk on menopause today at work. An outside speaker. About 10% of attendees were men (mainly younger) plus a mix of women of all ages.

The speaker went into a lot of detail about how debilitating perimenopause can be and the impact on work. She also talked through the support women can get both internally and through other orgs.

I know I should feel positive about all this but I couldn't help feeling that now people will just wonder whether any woman in their late 30s and above in our company (including me) is forgetting something or is 'off sick' because of their hormones.

I also feel a little uncomfortable that now, a lot more of my colleagues might now assume that if I am perimenopausal, I may have vaginal dryness and low libido among whatever else is wrong with me. Whether you have the symptoms or not it feels overly exposing and I have a couple of team members who would potentially exploit it as a vulnerability.

Please prove me wrong and tell me this is a positive move forward??

I agree with you OP. We spend our twenties and thirties being dismissed and discriminated against because of the possibility of children it for having them, now this.

I have mixed feelings about this too. On the one hand it's great that people are starting to understand, but if they "understand" that women are all a bit useless after 45, that's not great.

Also, like the other symptoms of menopause there's a risk that everything will be attributed. Lacking patience, that'll be menopause, it couldn't possibly be that you work with idiots etc etc

I completely agree with you.

I'm 51 and I don't want my (all male) managers looking at me and wondering when I'm going to become a liability.

I had this exact thought throughout the talk.

I think it is important to raise awareness but a lot of women's health messaging is based around a deficit model.

Not: your body can grow another human, that's amazing , let's talk about how you can be supported to be as healthy as possible and make sensible choices for you

More: childbirth is horrid, you'll probably have zero libido and have various problems afterwards suck it up

Not: menopause is a natural thing, are you aware of all the things you can do to be healthy like lifting weights for bone density etc - and if you have adverse symptoms, these are the treatments

More: menopause is SHIT, you will hate it, you will put on weight and forget your own name and your GP will be a total bastard to you

It's always the assumption that women's bodies are sickly and painful and that's just the way it is.

God, how awful. If you really want to improve things for women, make it easier to get to the GP and stop sending women on wild goose chases around their town to find a chemist that has their HRT in stock.

I think it needs to be balanced. Some women have a very tough time with peri and need accommodations, but some don't notice a difference at all. Most of us will be somewhere in the middle and can probably manage to plod on with a bit of understanding. Equivalent to pregnancy in fact.

The issue isn't education on the menopause but what I find to be the heavy focus on how bad it is without giving equal weight to the fact that most of us can manage our symptoms enough that it won't have a major impact on our work.

It is a bit much. We don't get to keep anything private any more. I found being pregnant at work exposing, I hated people constantly being aware of my personal circumstances and commenting on my "baby brain". The last thing I need now is everyone thinking I can't get through the day in one piece because I'm over 40. I'm all up for private, consensual conversations about our personal lives but not this.

Honestly I'm glad someone else has had this thought. I'm glad there is recognition of the problems that it may cause some women and that there is more help available now than previous generations have had. However the way this is being dealt with in my workplace is, I feel, putting equality in the workplace back by a few decades. It now seems to be the general opinion that as soon as a woman hits early 40s they are a ticking time bomb for needing allowances made as to their ability to do their job, learn new skills, even attend work everyday. When reality is women have been holding down jobs and going through the menopause for a long time now and if anything women of today are better equipped to do that successfully than they have ever been before.

Yep. I hate it. Managed to go through 40 years of work without my hormone levels being an issue for anyone except me.
trouble is there are people whose job is wellbeing initiatives so they have to make a drama out of every human frailty.

It's a really tricky one. I've been one of the unlucky ones with over 20 symptoms only some of which have gone away with HRT. I've thought about leaving work recently it's got so bad.

So I do want people to understand that and have compassion. But like you say, most of us, even with all these issues, are getting on with our jobs regardless.

I think it is often forgotten that yes it CAN be difficult for some women, but for other women it can a glorious feeling of freedom, and increased energy , clarity and focus (and libido )

i feel all this focus on the negatives is all very well meant but may ultimately be used against women … and is also not true for everyone

Absolutely agree with this

They can now discriminate, basically from age 16 onwards. Because they've got the child bearing to worry about and now they've got the perfect excuse to worry about what happens after.

My company was incredibly aggressive about it - they could see there was reluctance for people to attend a seminar and they ended up organising several dates - it was clearly a tactic to make sure that no one could be on annual leave or part-time workers couldn't say that they couldn't make the session due to their working days

My sister actually had her 50th birthday when her company did the sessions and she felt horribly self-conscious which is such a pity.

it sounds like yours was much more full on I would've hated it if all that information was given in mine

There is also another problem that a dr identified to me which is that many women do not have serious symptoms during the menopause at all. Some women do suffer badly and it is good there is awareness of this but many won't at all.

Over emphasis on the possibility of suffering can have a psychological effect on women who would otherwise be without serious symptoms or have low level symptoms. They feel 'worse' because they are being lectured at that this is inevitable. I haven't explained it very well but what this dr was saying to me was the psychological expectation of definitely feeling bad is a bad thing for everyone.

Sort of like if you have a bit of a cold and you dismiss it as nothing to worry about and get on with your day, walk the dog and so on is a completely different feeling to if you have exactly the same bit of a cold but assume you are coming down with Covid so spend all day in bed telling yourself Covid is coming and you feel so bad.

sadly is brings back memories of mixed sex puberty classes.
and yes the boys did tease the girls to no end.
just no need to do this, i bet some of the fellows who attended did so to avoid actual "work" for the x amount of hours this was discussed.

It does strike me as somewhat virtue signalling. Be seen to be good whilst you don't tackle the other things that make work ineffective, such as ensuring you have managers capable of managing people, not just with technical or business knowledge.

Self conscious is exactly how I felt too.

The talk covered the fact that menopause isn't a protected charecteristic but it's indirectly covered by other characteristics such as gender and age. It reminded me so much of the dip I had in finding jobs when I was of child bearing range. People saw you as a maternity leave risk whether you were pregnant or not. Feels like this could go a similar way in terms of hiring.

Also, I feel like people have forgotten that a company will get rid of you if they feel your health isn't up to the job

And they can do that

So setting people up to disclose all of their problems, which managers might not even have noticed - it's just a really bad idea

@onoitsnotgood yeah my sister didn't have any problems - though she left that seminar worrying about it!

It's shocking that people see it as inevitable now. I don't know what the percentages are. There's a point where this health "awareness" practically becomes gaslighting. I don't understand where it's come from. Is it just because people realise they can make money out of it? It really really isn't doing women any favours.

and I hate how it's become socially acceptable for people to just ask you how you are doing with it. I don't even know if I'm going through it. So far, I'm fine. But it should not be acceptable dinner party conversation! It's so unpleasant and I also really worry for women who just blame everything on that - there might be something really wrong and they're just blaming being a particular age.

@onoitsnotgood like the gals who post having no pregnancy symptoms and wonder is they are having a miscarriage not everyone gets nauseated breast tenderness or the damn implantation spotting (never once in 3 pregnancies) did i have this.
I do think that older women who's mothers went through meno with little symptoms know that not all women experience this stuff. as a matter of fact i think most don't.

There's a tricky balance. It's important it's no longer taboo. It's important for women to know the range of symptoms which can be part of it. It's important for men to have some awareness, because they might have wives, sisters, and they all will have mothers. And it's important to know that workplaces can be supportive (not all will do it in the same way.)

But it's also important to know that not everyone is affected. I'm in my early 50s and to date, my main symptom has been irregular/missing periods. That doesn't mean life won't be terrible when my periods finally stop, but it doesn't mean it will be, either. I have friends who have terrible symptoms and think HRT is a godsend. I knew someone who committed suicide - and I also know someone who realised it was probably a couple of years since she last had a period, and she just hadn't noticed (and didn't track.)

Some women need support, and some don't. I think the second part of that is being lost.

And if workplace hormones are problematic, then can we deal with the testosterone-filled men who are arguing and currently making my workplace an unpleasant place?

I think if you dont have bad symptoms or have any clue what is coming its a shock. Lots of women younger than 40 start peri and have symptoms like bleeding so heavy they cant leave the.house, leading to anemia and the consequences of that. Having managers that are educated to that rather than some thinking you have suddenly just become useless every 3 weeks is helpful. It's easy to say these talks are too much if.you are not dealing with it.

They'd probably be better off giving talks on the menopause at GP surgeries.

Totally agree with this. It’s the kind of thing my work do to make themselves look like a great employer. They are actually pretty good but annoy by wasting time on stuff like this. I would rather have things like access to gyms or yoga classes.

It's just become another stick to beat women with IMO. Don't employ women basically, they are slaves to their hormones FFS.

I'm 55 and haven't had one single day off in my life due to my hormones

I think there's a definitely a balance. I have had over 20 symptoms including being referred to a cardioligist for my heart palpitations. I'm lucky to have a boss who understands. But other managers would not necessarily be as supportive.

There's also the issue of women over 40 being looked at during hiring as a menopause risk (same as a pregnancy risk in 20s/30s). It's so wrong but I'm cynical enough to believe it will happen/already happens.