Male menopause champion

[AppleTreeOwner]

Where I work they have appointed 3 ‘menopause champions’- 2 are female and 1 is male ( who is a nurse by profession ). It is large organisation with hundreds of women who would be eligible. I personally think this should be reserved for females and have fed this back. This stance has not been supported by the HR lead ( who is female) who said that some women and male colleagues may be more comfortable talking to males.
What are others thoughts on this (including those who are/ have experienced menopause)- does it matter if male or female?

It depends what the role entails. If part of it is about supporting female colleagues, friends or family through the menopause, a male champion might be helpful as other men might feel more comfortable talking to/taking advice from a man.

If it's focused on managing symptoms, a female is going to be better placed in the role.

I think it's a good thing.

Well he is a nurse. So I imagine can deal with both female issues and male issues in a professional capacity.

He's hardly some 19 year old unqualified lad from the local rugby club.

I think it's great, it might let some men open up and talk/ask for advice on how to support their wives/partners as they go through the menopause.

If he' s there to help men understand their colleagues' or partner's menopause, that's surely good?

Would you feel the same way about seeing a male gynaecologist?

I think it's good. There is a choice of a man or a woman to talk to.

I almost always opt for a male given the choice and in this instance would choose a qualified male nurse over an unqualified colleague.

And fwiw I'm peri menopausal and have seen a female GP and a male gynae for internal exams recently and both were fine. I don't care who I talk to as long as they are qualified!

I am male, 50+, and have a large female team of a similar age. I have been on menopause in the workplace training. It is useful to know this stuff (also at home)

I’m going through the menopause and unless he is specifically trained to dish out clinical advice about HRT etc then I can’t see what he’d bring to the table that other women wouldn’t. If anyone wants to find out how to support women going through the menopause it might be better an actual real woman - just as women probably wouldn’t be best placed to advise on male mental health, for example.

Probably ticking some equality box though - can’t leave the men out now, can we.

Of course he can be a champion! The role of a champion in our organisation is to signpost to support, not to offer a diagnosis and treatment options. It is to “champion” the issues surrounding menopause. I’ve recently supported a male manager in another organisation who was such a great advocate for menopause support.

What we really need is to break the taboo of talking about menopause. And I always say, it’s not a women’s issue. Men should be aware - as managers, colleagues and outside of work too.

Some of the most negative experiences posted here have been from women seeing female GPs, who often trot out the line' Well I went through it and just had to get on with it.'

Being female doesn't automatically mean a woman empathises or supports other women.

I think it depends on the responsibilities. DH is on the menopause group at work. But their group is not about "support", it's more about putting in place policies and procedures to support women from the little things like making fans widely available for women feeling hot, to the bigger things to renegotiating contracts to eliminate shift work for women with insomnia, or referring to medical specialists.

I think a male champion is fab, my organisation offered menopause support and not one male attended. It felt like the lack of a male presence suggested it was nothing to do with my male colleagues, despite most of them being married or related to a female who will at some point go through the menopause.

We have a menopause support group at work and it’s all women - we talk about extremely personal issues at times and a male presence would stifle that.

We have both male and female menopause advocates at my company, and all line managers are required to attend menopause training, which is also offered to everyone and counts towards our hours training requirement each year. All the men in my team have done it - I think it's great to see men acknowledging the issue openly and how it affects the women in their life. We also have monthly menopause meetings that anyone can attend to ask questions or get support, and there are quite a few men that attend that as well as those hosting.

IMO it makes it much easier to talk openly about it than if it was kept a secretive 'women's issue'.