Labour work out the demographic they need to win

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www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/03/i-want-to-give-mid-life-women-a-voice-labours-anneliese-dodds-on-menopause-careers-and-the-wi?amp;amp;amp

Realisation dawns, but not nearly enough is my thought.

I'm not sure it's just clumsy, 'Shit what can we give them' thinking though. I'm wondering if it's very deliberately playing on our instinct to be nice. I've been through the menopause and, while it wasn't the best time of my life, it was far from being the worst. But I'm very aware that some women do have a horrendous experience, so right up until reading this thread, it had never occurred to me to question any of this stuff, because I didn't want to be a nob.

I know a lot of women who've had really bad periods, and a few who've had really bad pregnancies. I don't think I've known any who've had really bad menopauses, although I know some women do, and I suspect my mother did.

But if that anecdotal ratio of issues is actually reflected in the population as a whole (if) maybe this is the cheapest way of appealing to women?

The menopause policy is an example of how women's health is treated, compared to men's, with women lumped into a special interest group - we are all the same - while simultaneously being othered. We are never the norm - that's men, obviously. And we aren't individuals, who may have different experience and needs. You see this throughout healthcare.

Screening is another good example. You often hear men complain that screening programmes exist for women, not men, and that that is evidence of sexism. As a doctor, I'd say that's true, but the sexism is aimed at women. The evidence for screening saving lives over all is thin (NB I am not saying don't have screening or that some individuals aren't saved by it - I'm talking on a population level). Until a few years ago, when female doctors finally managed to push back successfully, screening information aimed at women was very misleading. It coerced women into being screened by quoting data that were incomplete and that over-stated the benefits, while downplaying the risks. Women were not treated as capable of marking an informed decision on the basis of all the facts. I think women should have breast screening - I always have it. But I also think that they should be treated as adults and presented with a truthful picture of the risks, as well as the benefits.

The reason that there are not many screening programmes aimed at men is that no one would ever treat men like this. Men are not coerced or infantilised. Men are not treated as a group, but as individuals. That's why you will never see political parties come up with a male equivalent of the menopause policy. Men would bristle, because men do not expect to be treated as a group - they are the norm (in their eyes).

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Thank you for pushing back

Well the menopause made me put on weight, killed my sex drive, made a whole night's sleep a thing of the past and also made me more bolshy.

Thing is I'm through it now but still have the same symptoms, especially the bolshy bit (in fact I think that seems to be increasing). I am dying to be canvassed by Labour but sadly in my constituency you could put a blue rosette on a lamp post and it would get in. Nobody bothers with door to door canvassing here. I suppose that might make it a bit easier for me to spoil my vote but it makes me very cross that I should even have to think of doing this.

Oh and probably most of the WI round here are farmers or farmers wives so I think they have a pretty firm grasp on the reality of biology.

Labour are hopeless. They could have worked out how to be better a while ago.

And yes many of us probably did vote for Blair. What a shame they’ve made such a mess of Labour today.

Excellent thought provoking post. Thank you.

Thank you, Floisme and MissLucy, this all makes a lot of sense.

None of it had occurred to me till I saw Thelnebriati's post!

I can't take any credit - apart from being truthful with my own patients. But I'm very glad that colleagues who were in a position to influence the screening programme kept on campaigning for truthful patient information. It's shocking that they had to, but unfortunately that's women's healthcare for you: a bracing combo of paternalism and neglect 😬

Some years ago I did some work on the benefits and costs of varying types of screening programmes. Not all are created equal.

Though I haven't followed the literature in this area quite so intensively, I believe that some types of screening programs are well supported by evidence (pap smears for sexually active women, colonoscopy for cancer of the colon?), while for others the benefit-harm ratio varies by such variables as age, past medical history, and the availability of any kind of effective treatment.

The general problem is determining when early detection actually increases, say, life expectancy, rather than just being an artifact of the disease having been diagnosed earlier. As we don't mostly have the ethical ability to compare two otherwise identical groups over time, to screen one group and not the other, and then to compare mortality rates for the screened disease in the two groups, much of what we do is not well understood in efficacy.

But often it's the best that can be offered, until science produces better diagnostic and treatment methods.

The efficacy or otherwise of screening isn't really the point, though. It's about honesty with women and treating them as capable of making decisions for themselves.

Alcohol in pregnancy is another example. There is no real evidence of small amounts of alcohol being harmful. OTOH, there is also no clear evidence of what a safe level is and - for obvious reasons - this isn't an experiment that can be done. So I support the recommendation that women avoid alcohol, but I think we should be honest with them - the recommendation reflects our ignorance about whether any level is safe, rather than evidence that small amounts are harmful. Many women are incredibly anxious throughout their pregnancy because they drank in the first few weeks, when they didn't know they were pregnant. We are harming those women psychologically, by not being truthful about the limitations of our knowledge.

Men are not treated like this. I can't think of a single example of a blanket recommendation being made to men without evidence to support it. Men are not made to feel shame about their health choices, whereas this happens to women constantly - even about accidental 'wrong' decisions, like drinking before knowing you are pregnant.

It's fine, I'm sure they can find enough ladies with penises to make up for the HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE they've fucked off right royally.

I agree completely. Just got carried away, probably because of the value-laden way breast screening has been discussed in so much popular press, despite it, too, sharing many of the same uncertainties.

Many recommendations about reproductive health -related activities show the pattern you describe, too.

I recall reading a US recommendation about the need for all women of reproductive age to avoid things like alcohol because they might fall pregnant.

That this was viewed as something beyond their control, the falling pregnant bit, was explained by data showing what percentage of pregnancies are unplanned.

In other words, that there are women who have pregnancies which are unplanned means that all women (whether fertile or not, whether in a heterosexual relationship or not) should alter their behaviour in certain ways, and not for their own benefit, but for the sake of a possible but currently fictional future child.

I have ever only seen one article addressing something even vaguely similar to men who might become fathers. But similar articles aimed at women are quite common.

Alcohol in pregnancy is another example. There is no real evidence of small amounts of alcohol being harmful. OTOH, there is also no clear evidence of what a safe level is and - for obvious reasons - this isn't an experiment that can be done. So I support the recommendation that women avoid alcohol, but I think we should be honest with them - the recommendation reflects our ignorance about whether any level is safe, rather than evidence that small amounts are harmful.

I had DS1 in 2005 and read around dietary risks in pregnancy. One of the articles I read was a Cochrane review that covered various foods and alcohol in pregnanycy. It said there was no evidence that a small number of units each week was harmful. IIRC there was a band of c2-8 units per week where there was no evidence of harm. I take your point about caution because there’s no ethical way of testing such a hypothesis, but the advice now does seem very draconian - and it gives other people license to comment on and police women’s choices in pregnancy. That’s where more honesty about the lack of evidence either way at low levels might give women more scope to tell people to eff off when they overstep.

You just know that box of chocolates is going to be full of Labour Sex Fudge.

This⬆️

But good luck getting those ladies to stuff envelopes and make the tea and do the other useful stuff Labour has always seen the old balls and chains as good for.

I agree with this. It’s give the old dogs a bone time, something that won’t offend the Momentum wing and twenty years old activists.

But I don’t want this. I want single sex loos/sports/prisons etc and for Labour to start balancing women’s rights and trans rights rather than giving ours away to look progressive.

I think the tendency to make these blanket recommendations or programs for groups is a feature of the identity approach.

In reality women and men suffer from all kinds of illnesses and such that may be debilitating, some of which are particular to one sex or the other. Many on the other hand won't be affected. There are programs already for employees who have health problems.

Undoubtedly in some cases a certain amount of awareness on the employers part is good, so they don't think people are taking the piss. But it's never going to be a one sized fits all thing.

You see similar things with stuff like university applications in the US. They take a race based approach that ignores the fact that people in those groups come from all kinds of circumstances and treating them like a block will end up with often really inappropriate outcomes.

'You can have some drugs and sympathy for the menopause, uterus-havers, just shut up complaining about gender neutral bathrooms, okay?'

THIS X 1000.

Labour would get my vote (like they used to actually), just by enshrining my sex based rights, thanks. I want to not be afraid to use a public loo or changing room.

The women I have known have trouble with menopause and work have it come gradually upon them, starting to have trouble coping then having working through being managed out of the workforce. Most women realise they are perimenopausal quite late into the process and it can last a short while or years. It is a boiled frog thing.

Menopause is a part of life, a continuum from being a girl child, through menarche, reproductive years, peri- menopause and post menopause.

Menopause is when your periods have stopped for a year, so it is diagnosed in retrospect.

What they need is good access to good health care when they are feeling rough so that they can function. Private health care doesn't even cover menopause unless it is a specific one-off complaint.

Making it a special thing (or even a 'protected characteristic' as the W&EC were pushing the other day) is not really going to help. It is just window dressing.

Completely agree with this and your previous post - the degree to which women's bodies are used to shame and police us is shocking.

I didn't want "menopause" leave an education at work for symptoms, I wanted functioning healthcare system which treated women with the same priority and respect as men. I'd still like that plus workplaces which don't use women's health conditions as "evidence" that women are problem employees - just humans who over the course of a lifetime will likely have some health needs.

Few women in their forties would now identify with the WI,

Aye because they're all about the menz now