Menopause: a matter for the law?

With an ageing population and a shortage of workers, the Government is keen that people delay their retirement. Yet it has just spurned a golden opportunity to help “thousands of older women” remain “at the top of their professional game for longer”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.

The cross-party Women and Equalities Committee had recommended making it illegal to disadvantage workers because of menopause symptoms – by making menopause a “protected characteristic” like age or race – and proposed trialling “menopause leave” for women who are badly affected.

The committee, chaired by Tory MP Caroline Nokes, cited its finding that women who experienced at least one “problematic menopausal symptom” at the age of 50 were 43% more likely to leave their jobs by 55 than those who didn’t. But the Government refused, saying there could be “unintended consequences” such as discrimination “towards men suffering from long-term medical conditions”.

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Discriminating chronically sick men?

“You what now? Let my hormone-addled mind parse this,” said Anna Morell in the Daily Mirror. Currently, women have no specific workplace rights when it comes to health problems caused by unavoidable hormonal changes. Yet the Government won’t give them those rights in case that discriminates against chronically sick men?

This makes no sense on its own terms: men’s long-term health conditions are already protected as “disabilities” under the Equality Act. It’s also bad policy, said Carolyn Harris on Politics Home. Many employers simply don’t understand that symptoms of menopause can make working full-time a real struggle. “I have lost count of the number of women I have heard from who have either been disciplined, dismissed, or felt pressured to resign because their symptoms have impacted their ability to do their job.”

Another reason to ‘sideline older women’

But many cope just fine, said Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times – and those that don’t are already catered for by the Act, because it includes age and sex as “protected characteristics”. Using the law to “pathologise the menopause” would simply give employers another reason to “patronise and mentally sideline older women because of their allegedly freaky-deaky handicapping hormones”.

HR departments “mill-stoning women with a ‘menopausal’ label” just isn’t the way forward, agreed Judith Woods in The Daily Telegraph – especially “when a great many of us, freed from childcare burdens, are bursting with creativity” and ready for fresh challenges.

Much more needs to be done to support British women during menopause. But “that’s one for the NHS”, not some “spotty regional office manager”.