Call to make menopause protected characteristic under Equality Act.

[NitroNine]

The Guardian have clearly been so overwhelmed by the last few days that they woman-ed all through this article about the call by MPs for menopause to be protected characteristic in UK Equality Act 😁

Yes - Trojan Horse.

Adding and taking away protected characteristics would just add more confusion to the current confusing minefield. I expect it would keep trainers in work permanently though.

Bit late for that, they already are meaningless

Menopause is medically less complex than pregnancy/maternity. Which also can be disabling resulting in being signed off work, major abdominal surgery, etc etc.

And by limiting protection to only those women for whom menopause reaches some random “disabling” threshold means that women passed over, made redundant, or not hired due to the stigma and negative perception of menopause alone will have no protection whatsoever. That may be what can be argued now, but it’s not good enough.

The thing is, pregnancy/maternity is usually pretty binary. You’re (usually) either pregnant or not. You’ve usually either given birth or not. Pregnancy and maternity are hands down very obvious characteristics that can lead to women suffering discrimination.

Menopause is much more of a spectrum in terms of its nature and effect. That’s why it’s treated differently to pregnancy and maternity (I should imagine anyway!).

There are people who are already very knowledgeable about this. We should listen to them.

Sometimes opinion can get in the way of expertise!

'Given birth' seems binary until you start to consider pregnancy loss. I lost a baby at 20 weeks - I went into spontaneous labour. I didn't qualify for maternity leave though had my child been born alive and then died even a few minutes later I would have.

💐

Me too. Spidey senses tingling.

@Lovelyricepudding that’s why I say ‘usually’. The Equality Act does have an exclusion in relation to pay for new and expectant mothers, and this is covered by other legislation, and rightfully so in my view.

It’s this other legislation that has led to your distressing situation, not the Equality Act as such. I’d support a campaign to review the range of situations of how new and expectant mothers are paid, exactly in the heartbreaking situation that you have described.

i stick to my point though that the Equality Act itself shouldn’t be tinkered with. it’s a powerful and well-thought-through piece of consolidating legislation that continues to be interpreted by the courts. It was drafted at a time prior to the existence of much of the ideological capture that we see today. What we need are more people who are well-trained in its use both in and out of the workplace, and more awareness generally of what it does, and does not do. For example… it’sa shield not a sword…. It’s protective and shouldn’t be used in a punitive way.

I’m sorry for your loss x

HR bod here. No, it's slready covered by 3 PCs- age, sex, disability.

I'm all for adding absolutely anything into the Equality act, (and of course the Hate crimes legislation). And eventually it will look so obviously silly, that the gvmt will be forced to review this nonsense.
Let's add menopause! And dog ownership! And height - my short stature is sometimes really really problematic.

We need the equality act eventually stripped back to age, sex, race, disability. Just those 4.

Yup. As soon as I saw this I thought this is another attempt to separate women from biology using anti-woman language. It’ll be “People who are menopausal”. And at the same time they might as well tweak all the other problematic language in the EA.

Caroline Noakes was on WH this week saying men go through the menopause and “we need to recognise that.”

@13.20

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019kjt

Men go through a similar phase at a similar age but it’s called andropause, not menopause. The hormones and impacts are completely different from menopause so I don’t like this trend of calling andropause “male menopause” at all.

Something about this feels off. I'm the first to acknowledge I had a relatively straightforward menopause, but nevertheless I find myself wondering what could possibly be behind this unprecedented level of interest in the health and well being of ageing women.

I am at this stage of life as a woman and I have to say this fills me with horror. It's not a disability and I really don't want to be discussing my periods and hot flushes with my male boss or colleagues - largely because anything that makes you look weak or vulnerable, in a male-dominated workplace, will only ever be used against you - either immediately or down the line.

Is pregnancy and maternity leave a protected characteristic? That was bad enough.

Agree Big Fat Trojan Horse.

Is pregnancy and maternity leave a protected characteristic? That was bad enough.

Without pregnancy and maternity as protected characteristics you could sack women for being pregnant or taking maternity leave, decide not to employ them, down grade their jobs whilst they are away. You could insist on them continuing to perform roles that are harmful to them or their foetus. Prevent them attending antenatal appointments...

Though it is questionable how successful this is as thousands upon thousands of women suffer this discrimination every year.

I am not sure it should be a protected characteristic, but menopause truly does affect many women extremely adversely. There are many conditions: M.E. Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimotos, Graves disease etc in which women present at least twice as much as men if not three times or more, and which start to manifest or get noticeably worse around the pre-menopausal or menopause phase. I read somewhere that estrogen plays a modulating role in inflammation for e.g.

I think people are struggling to grasp with menopause being described as having real hardcore effects on a significant cohort of
women because women's healthcare has always been abysmally shite and received little attention.
And I mean shite.
Many women have to buy their own thyroid medicine for e.g. If you are a woman who has sailed through it, or one of the lucky ones who has gone through it very late, you have no idea what many women are having to go through.
So it feels very new, and women who have gone through menopause without any problems sometimes can't relate.

It's getting harder for conventional medicine to ignore women's health particularly as it relates to hormones and the menopause, because so much information is out there on the internet now and we no longer have to put up with sitting in front of a misogynistic doctor telling us that the fact that we can't remember our own children's names anymore, can't sleep, have no libido, are losing our hair and can't concentrate is all in our heads and go away and pop some anti-depressants.

That said I agree with Trojan Horse, and think better advice and training for HR departments is in order and frankly just respect for women and our uniqueness. The respect needs to be central across many institutions.
The default in the working world is Men. It's always women trying to mould themselves into male working behaviour. Well why should we have to? We are not men.

I'm against this. What small to medium business is going to take on women rather than men when they can take maternity leave and then menopause leave? It may not be right but it is logical.

Surely It is right.

Pregnancy isn't an illness or a disability and is a protected characteristic.

Menopause isn't an illness or a disability and should also be a protected characteristic.

Disability already covered in law.

Women are indeed already protected from the discrimination on the basis of the disabling effects of menopause. I and several other PPs have explained this.

It meat be helpful to use a neutral example to explain, that has been well-discussed by HR people and the courts alike. Obesity is not classed as a disability. But it’s disabling effects can be. So if obesity is the direct cause of someone having chronic knee pain and reduced mobility, then provided it has a long-term effect (12 months, actually or likely), the chronic knee pain /lack of mobility IS the disability requiring the employer to consider reasonable adjustments. Now that knee pain/lack of mobility may not be to the extent that a person is entitled to disability-related benefits… that’s a different test.

What I’m advocating for here is:

1. Much better knowledge and awareness for people who make decisions about other people’s life at work, about their obligations, and the limits of these
2. an extremely cautious approach to amending the Equality Act. You really need to be careful what you wish for and this could have unintended consequences (protection on the grounds of sexual ‘preferences’ anyone?)

You have to remember that a horse designed by a committee is a camel.

The Equality Act is a good piece of protective legislation. It’s just widely misunderstood, and misrepresented and misused at times. It continues to be interpreted by the courts, hence being gender critical (I.e. sticking to the facts) is now a considered to be a belief that falls under the protection of the act.

What is truly lacking is a regulatory and enforcement body with investigatory powers to hold employers to account for their unlawful actions against employees.

The fact that complaints against the employer have to be brought mainly by the employee themselves(even if represented) is the true travesty and David/Goliath problem here, and where the power imbalance for women as a class is especially problematic.