Dawn Butler’s menopause policies

[FeminismandWomensFights]

Look I think it’s great if employers do more to accommodate the needs of women going through meno.

Not remotely convincing though coming from Labour and Dawn Butler. How will the employers even know who to target for this help- since in their book anyone who wants to can be a woman?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49781137

I’m a lifelong Labour voter and a menopausal woman so I should be all over this. I just feel totally patronised.

I'm confused by this. All the reports said menopausal women. That's fine. Ten years ago that would have been great.
FTM people - if they're on testosterone, will they get a menopause?
MTF people - if they stop their hormones, will they get some effects. Not actual menopause but some effects. But why on earth would they do that?
Either way Dawn's language fails the woke test. If FTM get some effects then it's menopausal test. If she's including MTF then plainly they aren't suffering an involuntary real menopause. And if she does mean the old fashioned natural vagina having woman, why hasn't she said 'cis'?
It's almost as if the new way of using words isn't sufficient to make things clear.
Ex Labour Party member who left over this nonsense.

I'm as Spartacus as the next adult human female, and no great lover of Dawn Butler, but this is potentially an important policy for women and it would be great to discuss it on those terms. Sometimes the TRAs aren't the only people centering men in every discussion...

The menopause isn’t an illness and doesn’t require all 50 year old women to be singled out at work for special compensatory measures - which would just deter firms from employing them.
If individual women are suffering symptoms that affect their life or ability to work, then they should see their GP for treatment, as they would with any other health problem.
The same goes for menstruation - when it’s normal it needs nothing other than some form of sanpro.
If it involves excessive bleeding or pain then it’s pathological, and due to something such as endometriosis, which again needs referral and treatment.
I’d hate to see all women labelled as dysfunctional at work, purely for having normal female biology. It gives ammunition to sexist men to deride us as weak or lesser. My generation spent 50 years fighting that crap - we don’t want it back, thanks!

Great post Babdoc!

The ageism we have to deal with is bad enough but add all this on top and employers won’t hire any woman over the age of 45yrs.
I have a whole bunch of menopausal symptoms

1. I have no wish to discuss any of this with HR
2. It is having no impact whatsoever on my work.

I’d hate to see all women labelled as dysfunctional at work, purely for having normal female biology. It gives ammunition to sexist men to deride us as weak or lesser. My generation spent 50 years fighting that crap - we don’t want it back, thanks!
Thanks for saying it for me babdoc
The menopause is NOT an illness

But some menopausal symptoms do have an impact at work - brain fog for example. I don't necessarily want special treatment, but I would like to see more understanding around symptoms. One friend of mine, for example, went into menopause after treatment for breast cancer, suffered terribly but felt that she couldn't ever speak about what was going on as she was already 'cancer recovery woman' - so even getting time off for GP appointments was a real struggle for her.

There's also the cultural thing - Jokes about hot flushes were common in my mum's office (legal secretaries) whenever one of the secretaries dared to pull up a (usually younger) lawyer or trainee for an error.

And remember that due to the rise in pension age and other factors, there are more menopausal women in the workplace than ever before and they're doing bigger, full time jobs. (When I first started work, it was common for older women to be in 'little jobs' - often part-time, that they'd started when their DCs went to secondary school (I worked in a bank and those same women also had to leave when they had kids...))

I really have no wish discuss my menopausal symptoms with HR.

That’s great. We’ve implemented some stuff recently and it’s like a bloody floodgate has opened. I can barely get to 10am without someone wanting a chat about vaginal dryness.

Agree LonnyVonny and imo it’s the difference between rad fem and lib fem responses. As a rad fem I would like the challenge the current presumption of default male, which is very detrimental to women. Lib fems prefer to claim that they are the same as men, that menopause is nothing major and that we should suck it up and get on with it so that the men don’t see us as weak.

I can guarantee that if men went through menopause, the way it was treated would be very different indeed.

In my understanding (it's still in the future for me, although probably within the next decade so I've been reading up about it and talking to older friends) the effects of menopause vary greatly from woman to woman. I'd hate to see the idea that menopause is inevitably crippling become the default assumption. Offer help to those who need it (and doctors do need to become less dismissive of "women's problems"), but don't assume it will be the same for everyone.

It's likely for example that menopause for me will mean less brain fog. I suffer from migraines, which cause "cotton wool brain" both before and after; each attack means I'm pretty much out of action for a day at least. Migraines are tied to hormones and often disappear in menopause, so I'm quite looking forward to that.

@DreadPirateLuna but at the moment the default is 'this has absolutely no impact on a woman's life or work' - and that doesn't help anyone either.

Out of all the workplace policies, only a small % will affect a worker at any time - I never used the carers policy or the sabbatical policy at my last job, for example. I only have one child, so only used the maternity policy once in one job. Having a policy doesn't set a default, it just sets a standard for treating people which you can use or not if it applies to you or not.

What is wrong to me is that menopause becomes something special.

Really, a menopausal women with serious symptoms needs help the same way as someone with high blood pressure or a bad back or dpreessiom might need help. Surely we need a better way to handle human frail ness in all its forms. The workplace should be forced to treat all people as humans not a potential robots. We should not have to list all possible impairments and legislate the correct employer response for each!

The workplace is still the set up from years gone by, designed by men, for men. Women have been shoehorned into this set up and then it’s oeriodically fiddled around with.

Women who get in best in this workplace are those who can behave the most like men.

But we are not men. And women can and do have biological issues that don’t mean they are incapable of doing their job, but may mean they are incapable of pretending to walk like a man any more. Why should they be punished for that?

So I think that the idea is good but have all the concerns others have raised about Lanour’s definition of ‘woman’.

The arguments that it's natural and so women should just get on with it have been used for pregnancy, periods, all sorts of things related to female biology.

When women started trying to break into areas that were male dominated the argument had to be that we were the same, could do anything they could do, or we would never have been allowed in.

The world is built by men for men, and places like work this is v obvious. The norm is male, and females have to fit in with that. Loads of stuff doesn't quite fit us, from air con temps to table heights to perching on bar stools while trying to look professional to safety equipment and so on.

We have started to say well look actually we aren't just smaller versions on men we have different needs at times. Men have needs to these are met by default though to the point that they aren't noticed.

On menopause 'Around 3.5 million women aged over 50 years are currently in employment in the UK. Studies have shown that at least of 50% of women have reported as finding work somewhat or fairly difficult due to their symptoms of menopause. Around 10% of women have actually given up work all together as a result of their symptoms.'

10% of women giving up work is significant and will impact enormously as we are already in lower wages, with lower pensions etc etc

The idea that women should soldier on and if they can't hack it then get out (which is what some posts on here add up to) is something I hoped we were getting away from, and this is fwr as well.

Menopausal women are frail?

Terrible choice of words!

Agree 100% Fraggling

Frailness of the human body in any for,. ( but ok, I git myself distracted by trying to figure out how you spell frail so perhaps word choice got overlooked

Statistically the ones who've had anything removed are a minority, so no worries there.

It just gives organisations another reason not to employ middle aged women. Of course they can't be open about it, but that has never stopped any in the past. TW are the least of our worries. This just provides an additional difference to the male 'norm' and makes us even less likely to get jobs.

It just gives organisations another reason not to employ middle aged women.

Around 70% of our staff are female.

Around 65% of those are aged between 45 and 60. And many others have had cancer treatment which has put them into artificial and prolonged menopause. Or hysterectomies for other conditions.

ArsenicChip so it’s better to let 10% of women quit their jobs??

I mean imagine if you used your argument to say that we shouldn’t have maternity leave either. Or maybe no protection for disability because it might put employers off. Can’t do anything to upset the employers can we?

The TUC has information on menopause policies. I asked my HR last year if we had a menopause policy. They just seemed bemused.

My concern is also about how additional protections put in place for women could impact on the chances of them getting hired in the first place. It's already challenging enough for women to deal with sexual discrimination and ageism.

My first thought, though, was how you would go about defining who this would be applicable. By Labour's standards it would only apply to some women and even to some men.

I really have no wish discuss my menopausal symptoms with HR.

^ This. I feel patronised enough already.

So work remains generally for men,

And for women as long as they can pretend to be and fit in with a man's world,

And if / when something happens that reveals they are, oh god, actually female,

They should quietly leave

To avoid making things difficult for the women who are still able to pretend they are men.

Sounds good.

Maternity and menopause discrimination happen. Sex discrimination too. Thousands of women lose their jobs every year due to pregnancy. 10% of menopausal women quit. These things have real life potentially large financial consequences, and likely others as well eg psychological.

Yet there are women on here saying AOK makes sense, can't go letting on to men at work that we're not just small men with boobs and smaller brains, all the icky biology stuff. Or naturally they'll want us out.

Yeah I thought we were getting beyond all this.

Ffs you don’t need to discuss it with HR. I presume that it doesn’t affect you in a debilitating way either as otherwise you would have little choice but to discuss it. Jesus. Imagine if someone came up with all this shit for protections for disability. I’m alright Jack so everyone else should just suck it up and leave their job if they can’t hack it.