Off Topic,Understanding Menopause- Why it should matter to you
This is not a cybersecurity topic,so I hope that you will bear with me. I do think that information like this can be useful to us as coworkers and friends however. If we are compassionate, we build trust and make a better world. Rather like remote work is an accommodation that most of us have now benefitted from, menopause accommodations could make workplaces more agreeable for all of us. And I say this with a background as a SEND teacher and accessibility advocate: accessibility accommodations benefit us all and should be considered standard practice
I wanted to write this so that it might help people understand what women( and indeed anyone with a uterus) experience, but also so that women themselves might recognise menopause and perimenopause. I don’t think we understand it enough, or what it might mean for us as we age. It is so much more than hot flashes.
This is important to the workplace because the process of menopause can have huge impacts at work as well as personally. As we have established, it also qualifies as a need that can be met worth workplace accommodations. Most people still think that menopause is just hot flashes and being “moody”. But it not only deserves more compassion, it can include over 30 different symptoms.
A non exhaustive menopause symptom list is linked here. There is also a fun tv interview with Lisa Snowdon and Dr Louise Newsom here.
Some symptoms that are less known are:
Itchy skin/ears
Ringing ears
Blurred vision
Brain fog
Joint pain, especially early in the morning
Sudden aversion to foods you previously liked
Imagine dealing with that, plus your clothes no longer fit, everyone at work is laughing at you and you doubt your ability to do your job… not fun. The truth is that you aren’t less able, you just need to allow yourself more time and space and grace to do things. And truly, that isn’t a bad thing for anyone at work.
The problem? Unfortunately, many women leave the workplace during the perimenopause or menopause.
I am one of them. Or at least, I left full time, permanent work.
I often think, if men had a debilitating condition that meant they struggled at work, we would probably see solutions much faster. I’ve seen more adverts for viagra over the years than I have for menopause remedies. We know that women’s healthcare is often not as advanced as it should be.
Here are some resources about women leaving:
A bbc article explains some of the experiences women have faced.
An HR study about women in menopause leaving the workplace due to lack of support.
And a Bloomberg video about women in menopause leaving work.
I also write this to share a personal story with you.
A few years ago, I had a panic attack when I got a Teams notification. Now it is easy to laugh at this, as who has not hated Teams!(sorry,Clippy). But this panic came after around a month of solid chest pain, and anxiety so bad that I no longer felt that I was coping at work. In fact, I had experienced occasional chest pain and abnormal anxiety for several years. It was only when I used private healthcare through work that the doctor suggested it might be perimenopause- the stage before your periods have fully stopped for a year and one day. Getting HRT via gel and tablets, changed my life. I was able to balance my emotions more and I didn’t get the chest pains or headaches. I do however have to manage my workload now and I set more boundaries.
My choice was to leave full time permanent work, as I found that workplaces weren’t that accommodating. Unfortunately I found myself in a less than supportive work environment at the time of the panic attack, and it was making things a lot worse. I went from being able to handle very complex situations calmly, to feeling panic and as if I absolutely couldn’t do the work. Like many menopausal women, I felt frozen like a deer in headlights when I was stressed.The team I was working with took great pleasure in being unpleasant. Constant criticism, and unreasonable demands, the stuff that is common to many workplaces. But whereas I would have been able to cope with it at 30, at 40+, it put me in functional freeze. I truly thought, maybe I am useless and don’t deserve this role. Yet this was a role I was more than capable of carrying out effectively. I just needed less snarky comments and fewer unnecessary deadlines.
The brain fog and feelings of inadequacy were debilitating. I no longer even recognised my body, the weight gain was incredible. So I was getting up each day, like many perimenopausal women, feeling anxious,uncomfortable and useless at everything. I think that modern workplaces, remote or in person are very high pressure. There is a lot of “pretending” to be busy, a lot of pressure to show “results”. Add to this the need to be “seen” or to “join in” on after work drinks or social events and it means that everyone is stressed. Plus, now we have layoffs and economic pressures to handle. I think we are ALL going through something right now. I don’t see work becoming less stressful in the short term, but I do think we can all play a part in helping each other to cope.
As an example: I remember once feeling nauseous and having a hot flash, before I got HRT, and coworkers teasing me that my red face was because I had a crush on a coworker. Which then made it worse,as I knew that was the target of jokes too. I think the hardest thing is that you can go almost overnight from being young looking and energetic to visibly older and more cautious and withdrawn, and you become invisible or less “useful”. It is amazing to me how invisible you become as a woman once you age, your body shape changes and you have more boundaries. It is just part of life I guess. But I wish we would understand what women go through,and be kinder to each other.
So this is why I say accommodations and changes in attitude could help us all. Sadly, it is currently the case that a menopausal woman needs to talk to HR about her need for accommodations, and that can work negatively against her. Especially in this economic climate.
So please be mindful that it probably isn’t the case that your coworker is stupid, or moody or incapable, it is probably that she is menopausal and needs some understanding. I’m not here suggesting that you have a licence to be grumpy and lazy when menopausal. But I am asking for us to understand the huge health changes that come with menopause.
If what I write helps even one or two women to recognise their symptoms, I will be happy. My perimenopause, when we tracked it back in medical interviews, began around age 35. It took me ten years to get HRT or a diagnosis. Despite clear symptoms showing up. My anxiety was dismissed as because I was moving house, my hair loss joked about by one doctor as “at least you save money on waxing”….
I am glad that many workplaces have menopause policies now, it means that people will get the accommodations they may need. I hope that in sharing this, it might mean some of you will understand yourselves or your friends or coworkers more. Menopause isn’t something to be feared, if you understand what is happening, it passes by much more easily. But it would be a lot easier if more people understood that it wasn’t “being moody”, but expereincing huge physical changes, some of them quite unsettling if they are unexpected.
Thank you for reading. I don’t post as much as I work mostly in edtech and public digital literacy now, I took a step back from full time cybersecurity work and now donate my time rather than bill for it. And I found that publishing my work meant it got LLM scraped and I am just not here for contributing to some techbro plagiarism machine. (Not that buttondown does this, but anything on the internet is up for grabs it seems). But thank you, and have a lovely week, I hope that you see many dogs with floppy ears.
For more information here are some links:
Menopause Matters
Suggested reading
Amazon (U.K.) book list