Around 25 million women experience menopause each year. By 2030 this number is expected to increase to 47 million per year. These are statistics from the European Institute of women's health, 2023 that is a lot of women going through menopause. What type of help are women getting? How does menopause impact work? And how do you deal with the life admin that is thrown at you? Welcome to our podcast, part of our wider project, coping with menopause, exploring women's lived experiences of work and the multi generational squeeze. This is funded by UCL Grand Challenges. My name is Dr Meena khatwa, and I'm a Senior Research Fellow based at the Social Research Institute, and the lead on this project. And now in my eighth year of perimenopause, which has been a very bumpy journey.
Thanks, Meena. My name is Dr Kelly Dixon. I'm an associate professor based at the Social Science Research Unit. I'm also an integrative psychotherapist, and have been living with the perimenopause for about the same number of years.
Hello. So I'm Lauren. Lauren Chiron, CEO and founder of women of a certain stage, I support organizations to become menopause savvy and menopause supportive. I have basically dived straight into this area because I left my job in my early 40s thinking I had early onset dementia, only to find out it was just menopause. I'm now 18 years post menopausal, and looking forward to our conversation today.
Hi, I'm Sonia. I work at UCL in the advancement office, and I'm about three years perimenopausal, and also have nearly four year old twins. Thank you. Hi,
and I'm Jo I'm Josephine. In in full,
I work at UCL as well as a teacher practitioner. Actually, I'm no longer a practitioner. I should just say teacher lecturer anyway, and it's been a bumpy ride as well. But I believe I'm postmenopausal now because I haven't had a period for 12 months. So yeah, I
think I'm postmenopausal. Yay.
Well, thank you for joining us today, and thank you for giving up your time to share your lived experiences wisdom and expertise concerning menopause transition and juggling work and pressures at home before we dive into our conversation with our guests, I want to share some astonishing and alarming statistics about what kind of impact menopause, and this includes early perimenopause that is having on women within the workplace. According to a 2024 Chartered Institute of personal development CIPD survey, 67% of working women between the ages of 40 and 60 who experience menopause symptoms say it negatively impacts their work. This includes symptoms like hot flushes, brain fog, anxiety, flooding, but these are only but a few, and we know them, the symptoms are growing by the minute. Career progression. 20% of women say their symptoms have a negative impact on their careers. Sick leave. 53% of women in the survey say that they have taken sick leave due to their symptoms, and this is the most astonishing fact, leaving work. 20% of women have considered leaving work due to a lack of support, and 6% have actually given up work. How do these figures fit into the wider topics that we are going to explore around wellbeing and caring responsibilities at home. The following topics are a result of our roundtable discussion on challenges and solutions. Over to my co presenter, Kelly,
yeah. So we were, you know, very passionate about this topic in terms of, like, juggling work life balance while people are going through the menopause. So we held a round table where we really wanted to ask people what their lived experiences are of the challenges, and start to think about how we can support women going through the perimenopause and menopause. So we're sort of looking at solutions as well. So one of the things in the first part of our discussion that came up was that we really need to start connecting the dots around the different symptoms of menopause, and what emerged from that was starting to think about menopause as a biopsychosocial kind of experience. So that's kind of just like a fancy way of thinking about the fact that it's not just the physical changes that are happening in a woman's body, but that there are psychological and social aspects as well, and that they're all interconnected, so that we can start thinking about this phase as a life transition, and to look at it holistically. So I want to put this over to our guests to start thinking about like, does that way of thinking about menopause? Is it helpful? Does that resonate with you, and can it help us think through how to support women during the menopause?
I think it's fascinating to have this terminology, bio psychosocial, because sometimes when I read about what's been, what's out there, about menopause in the workplace, especially, just feels like it's women are being, I don't know, classed as not competent and unable to do things anymore. So I feel having this different way of looking at it is actually quite good. And yes, it is very much all of those things. It's biological, it is psychological, and it affects a social life, because you are this one person with us. There's various hats on. So I think it's a really good way to look at it, because if we look at the workplace, for example, the hot flashes, if you don't have good ventilation in your work environment, it could be significantly impacting terms of disabling and just not comfortable to be in that space. And if you're working around maybe just men, and you're the only woman in that office, you know, how do you approach this subject? And yeah, so I will just stop there, just briefly for other people to say something
I feel being able to recognize what's going on with yourself and in the workplace is super important, but also having line managers you can speak to about if it's something I've recently done, and it just felt like a weights been lifted. Some of the symptoms you mentioned, you know, being in meetings where not remembering people's names and not understanding what's going on, and looking at people looking back at your teams, live to say, I've worked with you for eight years. How can you not know my name? But just having that, that wider conversation, I think, is so important, and also people, also understanding that perimenopause can be for someone who might not be in their 40s, 50s. I mean, I am late 40s, but just that wider conversation, understanding the impact in the workplace. And like you said, the array of symptoms anxiety. When someone said your appraisals coming up previously, I'd be like, great. I can talk about all the things I want to do ahead, but when you're going through that stage of transition, that's a pretty scary thing to think. You need to speak about future projects and, yeah, wider conversations. But the impact of it in the workplace, I think there's still a lot of education. So it's great that we are able to have these kinds of conversations.
I think that anything that helps us look at menopause more broadly, whether it's terminology, whether it's just having more conversations, the reality is this generation of people coming up to and going through menopause hasn't had the conversation. We haven't been educated on it. So if we don't educate at work, then we're never going to get some sort of status quo where we can thrive through menopause, which we absolutely can do. It's a time of renewal. It's really exciting time. It's an amazing transition, and if we've got the right knowledge, whatever the terminology is, but we do have to recognize that it is multifaceted. So whether we use the terminology you've suggested, or we just recognize that it affects every aspect of us, you know, we've also got to think about our urogenitory symptoms that we can have as well, and our sex life and libido. So there's so many different ways that we can be impacted, and we need to get that basic education out there, not just for ourselves, but for the people we live with, work with and socialize with as well. And I think anything and everything we can do to do that is going to be really beneficial going forward.
Yeah, so one of the things that came up in the round table was this idea of kind of education can you say a bit more about about that?
Yeah, I think that someone who leaves their job thinking that they've got early onset dementia. Meena, you quoted 6% of people actually leaving 20% considering other surveys, have quoted even higher statistics than that. And I think that it's really important that we recognize that we're going to go through menopause. We're going to go through it. It's something that we haven't been educated. We know it is on the school's curriculum now in England, and that will gradually come through. It's popped up in GCSE biology over the last couple of years, which is great. It's good step forward, but we still have to get to a place where people are as comfortable approaching people to talk about menopause as they are puberty. And if we can get to that place, I think that's where, you know, we're going to hit the sweet spot. So we need to be comfortable talking about it asking for help and support. I know when I do surveys and I ask people, How great are you asking for help and support, they mark themselves really low. I want to ask them, how good are you at giving help and support? They mark themselves really high. So I'm curious how we turn that around, so that we can start to ask for help and support and be open to receiving it as well. So if we can get a base level of knowledge, you know, I run a free course every couple of months. I know you're doing great education here at UCL. So and we just have to keep that conversation going, making sure we're keeping the statistics and information that we're providing up to date and accurate as well. But just having the conversation, because when we change our demeanor and we get confident to talk about it, we give the people around us the grace to feel confident as well.
Sonia, I was really struck when you said that you had your conversation with your line manager, would you have imagined that that would have been possible before? Or could you say a bit more about how that came about?
Yeah, it was my, the HR partner in our office I spoke to initially to say, you know, I didn't realize what was going on. It's interesting to what you mentioned about the early onset of dementia, the forgetting things. I was always the one to remember things, always the one who planned. And then it got to a point where I was, like, declining invitations to meet people and getting pulling away. So I thought this is actually affecting my day to day, like I see certain meetings and I'm like, oh gosh, I've got to go to this. So I had the conversation super understanding. I sent some amazing links. UCL. Got some really good online support that was super helpful, and she advised me to speak to my line manager, and that conversation went much better than expected. I have a female line manager, which maybe was helpful. I mean, I don't know personally, maybe not at that situation yet, but just to have that weight lifted and to know that I can show up to a meeting, knowing that if it doesn't go great or I forget my words, it was, it was just, yeah, a weight had been lifted and going forward now, appraisals coming up in two weeks. No, not worried about that. I can speak openly. It's been great. And I just, I'm thankful that within my office or UCL wide, that that conversation is being elevated. Can
I just ask, do you feel UCL is maybe slightly ahead of the curve? I mean, if you talk to your relatives or friends, this is to everybody that some maybe play some of your friends and colleagues. Maybe they're not getting that kind of support, or maybe they feel reluctant to talk to people. I don't know whether it's partly because we do so much research on menopause now, and it's definitely getting out there. You know conversations are being had, and we know that it's it's been sort of ticking along in media as well, with Davina McCall and others. But what do you think generally, when you speak to your neighbors, your friends, your family, what's the sort of sentiment I
feel that UCL is ahead. I've got leases who are late 20s, early 30s, and I'm having that conversation. It's kind of bizarre to think that they didn't it's not on their radar at all. You know, he's 33 you might not be thinking about perimenopause, but I feel like, Yeah, I think maybe cause you still a lot of women's health research is going on. But in terms of friends, they're finding their information on social media. It's not a workplace conversation. And for the majority of them who I speak to, they wouldn't be able to live their line manager and say what's going on and how it's affecting their day to day. I feel it's probably not uncommon. A lot of women are suffering in silence. I mean,
I wouldn't say, you say is ahead without knowing what goes in other departments. It's difficult to say that well, from my point of view anyway. I mean, I work at UCL, and I wasn't comfortable, actually, because at the time as well. I didn't know that these were the symptoms of menopause, because all I heard about menopause was hot flashes. That's what you heard about a lot, and that's what I saw, maybe in your mother and things like that. So anything beyond hot flashes was a little bit what's going on and then, like the forgetfulness and lack of concentration, because there was a time where I was trying to prepare for a lecture and I just couldn't get my head around, and this is a lecture I've done for donkey's years. And I was like, what's happening to you? Why can't you just get this? And I was so, so worried that I might get to the lecture theater and not know what to say, so that was really a bit of concern for me. But at the time, like I said, I wasn't very much aware that this was a big part of the menopausal transition, and I wasn't open to talking about it at the time as well, until I got to know. So education is very, very important, not just for those who are going through it, but those who are coming know behind, because for them, it will be empowering, because education is empowering. It frees you. It gives you a lot of freedom. You know what you know, and you can know leverage on that. So I think it's important to know, share this information very much widely, and educate people about it, whether it's a man or woman, and also, like you talked about within your social context, your family, it's important that at least one person knows about it. So for me, for example, I was able to talk to my son. My son's about it, because there were times when I wouldn't want to cook. Now, just feel so down. And that takes a because you feel like you're you know, I've been doing this again for ages. That validates me as a mom, to cook and prepare the house. And I don't feel like doing it, so I had to let him know, this is what I'm going through. This is part of what comes with it. And they were happy to, okay, I'll do the cooking because they can. They're very great cooks as well, which is great to have employees to cook. So yeah, there's a cultural and social there's a lot of things going on, but it's important to know, educate people, and especially, I think, our families as well. Lauren,
I mean, are you seeing through your work, through your own experiences, from where you were in your sector to where you are now? Do you feel the conversation has moved on? You know, in terms of how far we've progressed, if you think about the generations before, like when you talk to your friends, your family members, what's the sort of conversation Do I think?
I think I'm I'm in a slightly unique situation, because I've done nothing but study and work with menopause for 10 years right across the world. So I get a lot of inbound inquiries, and a lot of inbound, you know, people asking for help and support, asking where they can get good information. What are the trusted sources? So I probably, probably like, you know, you go and buy a new car, or you have a baby, suddenly, everyone's driving the same car. Everyone's pushing a problem with the baby in it. I just see menopause everywhere I go, and so it's probably slightly harder for me to answer that question, but what I can say is that whereas I probably worked with financial services firms and insurance firms in the first couple of years, the inbound inquiries now are right across every industry and every size of organization, and to me, that signals that people really recognize that they have to do the education, they have to get their benefits packages right, they have to change the culture. So I'm seeing there's always going to be box ticking, but I'm seeing less one off conversations around menopause to do the menopause thing at work, and more strategy where we're looking at the entire colleague journey from job design all the way through recruitment and the lifetime of a colleague, to make sure that every touch point we're seeing something where if menopause is popping its head up because you're managing someone going through menopause, being managed by someone going through menopause, or you're the person going through it, there's actually some really cohesive support available that's Really easy to access and really easy to use as well. And I think for me, that's where I can see a massive difference in the workplace. And there's still going to be people that are, you know, got to get on that, get on that journey, and join us as well. So I'm definitely seeing a movement there. My friends all know me as the menopause person. So I guess I'm the, I'm like, the the local, I don't know what, what? You know, the library, you know, Lauren, what book should I get out for this? What podcast should I listen to for that? So, yeah, I'm definitely, I'm definitely seeing that people are more comfortable having the conversation. And I think that does come back to how we feel about it and how confident we are, you know, to be able to go and speak to our manager or our family members and just help them feel more comfortable as well.
Okay, so thank you, everybody. That's been brilliant. And I think this segues nicely into the second topic that was discussed at the round table. And this was a fascinating one, because lots of the participants who came we're talking about the fact that we have so many roles, and now, obviously we're talking about a certain generation of women, sort of 40 plus, who are juggling family responsibilities, whatever those caring responsibilities may be, but also the jobs that we've had and we've built up our careers, or we may be at the beginning of our careers, but you know, we are trying to sort of juggle that with the home life. And we described it in the round table as spinning lots of plates. We're just spinning these plates constantly with the home, with the work, with our own menopause journeys that we're going through. And then we have this question about, when you're How did when you start to come to terms with it, and you realize you can't do it all. How do you start to relinquish some of that control? Like, just say, you start to think about your own self care. And we thought about three different sort of themes around this. We thought about awareness, like when you start to be aware of your own symptoms, and that actually I need help, or I need to sort of let something go so and then there's acceptance, coming to terms with it, and then there's about action. What do you do? So if we start off with the awareness, what's been the most useful advice you have been given, and where did your awareness come from? And when did you start to feel at home and at work, and you mentioned about getting your son to do a bit more cooking. So sort of as women who are juggling, spinning all these plates, when do we start to let go of those plates? And when do you think you know what it's okay for me to say to someone, I can't do this. Can you help? And I know you know, it's that fear of feeling like, well, if. Give this to someone else. Does that mean I'm not capable anymore? So it's a bit of a conflict that we have in ourselves, isn't it? When we get to this point where I certainly know that I can't work, you know, burn the midnight or like I used to 10 or 20 years ago, I just, my body just can't take it, my brain can't take it anymore. So I'm like, It's okay for me not to finish this deadline. I'll do it tomorrow, but it's taken me a really long time to reprogram my brain to think that way. So I'd like to put that to you all about spinning plates and passing the baton like, how easy has it been to do and, yeah, you know, having that awareness about it as well.
I'm curious whether, if we got the education right from the get go, whether we would actually get to the point where we felt like we couldn't spin all the plates. So just to throw a slightly different angle on it, if we knew what perimenopause was, if we knew what the menopause transition was all about, would we perhaps set ourselves up for success in a different way, so that we didn't try and do all the things all the time for all the people, and actually perhaps set everything up differently, so that we were delegating more, that we were allowing people to fail forward, in other words, giving people space to do things wrong and to get it wrong, rather than jumping in and just doing it for them, because it was quicker and easier, would we actually take that step back and do what we end up having to do because we've gotten in that situation? So I'm just curious about whether there's another angle, and whether there's another way to look at it, so that if we prepared ourselves better, we prepared the people around us better, that we wouldn't actually get the point where we took on too much in the first place and therefore it got the point where we didn't feel like we could cope with what we'd taken on board. Because thinking about 18 years post menopausal, I can now do all the things I was doing before. I can sit here and quote all the statistics that you gave when you opened up the session today. I couldn't have done that 18 years ago when I was going through menopause, because I just had too much I was so apparent. My child was in hospital, I was working a full time job, I was traveling a lot with work. And even if you take menopause out of that, it was too much for any one person to be doing. But we just keep on saying yes, and we keep on doing and doing and doing, and then we wonder why we can have that kind of road crash when we get to menopause. So I think that it is about the knowledge. It's definitely about being kinder to ourselves. I think we've we're the generation, the people going through menopause right now are a generation that are very much first, that have taken on the senior roles, have worked longer and later into life, have tried to do the home life alongside all of that. And many of us are doing it without the community support, without the network, without the sisterhood around us. So I wonder if there's just a bit of a perfect storm there as well, that there's a lot of other if you look at the psychosocial elements of that as well, whether there are other contributing factors, which I know, I'm sorry I'm not answered your question, but I've just wanted to put a different angle on it as well. No,
completely. This is sort of open to debate, and I think it's just something that was, we talked about as a metaphor. You know, when we're sort of, we're sort of stretched so thin, aren't we, and we're trying to do so much, and it was just that kind of image of we're juggling. But absolutely, it's like, how do you sort of think of it from a different, different perspective? No, that's totally fine.
I think that's interesting, turning
it back on its head in terms of being prepared for it, but actually being prepared for something, and then actually experiencing it at different things. And I'm sorry to use this analogy like death. Okay, you might know somebody's going to pass away, but when they actually do, it hits you very hard, and you still go through that grief process, that denial of anger, before you come to accept it, and then you move on. So I think, yes, it will be good to see how that might change things. With the knowledge that the education is coming up now, how the maybe future generation might actually experience it might be different to how we experienced it, but I think they will still go through that curve, that change curve anyway. And yes, I call our generation this queer generation, because we've got children who need us. We've got aging parents who need us, and we're there being all to and everything to everybody, and not really thinking about ourselves. I think what I learned to do was just to, like, you said, be kind. So it's self compassion and then seeking connection. Those two things really have helped. Like, okay, I'm still who I am. I'm becoming a new person. This new person has to do things differently, maybe simplify the way I used to do things, and that could include asking people to do some of those things, because I can't do them all. Otherwise I won't have anything else to give and I'm going to collapse and die. So what would be better me being here, being able to do something and help other people to do it? No. Me doing it, but still being there, and then hopefully the new me might recover part of the old me in terms of being able to multitask and get it known do it well. So I think it's just that being kind to oneself, so self compassion and seeking connection, I think those are important in moving forward and embracing this. I wouldn't say it's an amazing transition, it's a change, but it's become a new person in different ways. Yeah,
I think it's great to hear from you knowing that it's, um, temporary, and that you're on the other side in things you wouldn't have been able to retain at the beginning, because I'm at the part where I can't retain anything. So you've given me some hope. That's awesome. I think for me, the awareness, I wasn't aware of what was happening to me. It was a very good friend of me who bought me the Vina McCulloch and I had it on the shelf, right? Just thinking, okay, whatever. Then started reading it. I was like, oh my goodness, this is what's going on. But in terms of action, for me, just trying to look after myself, like you said, in a bit of self compassion, I started to do some additional study, and I realized I'm reading the same chapter of page even 10 times. This is not a good time to be doing this. So delayed that by a year and just trying to find a new way of living and accepting that this is a new way. Again, it's temporary, which is great to know, but being an older mom, solo mom with twins, working full time, having to accept support, or, dare I say, Buy in support, I can save that two hours of cleaning the house and use that energy to play enjoy my twins. And I say enjoy rather than enjoy, because when I was at the beginning of perimeter perimenopause, if a I didn't I didn't know what was going on. So very much enduring these two beautiful kids. But now I'm getting to a point where I can enjoy and learning to say no to things, whether that's helping people or taking on additional or supporting others. It's like, I need to look after this little bubble first. This soon will pass, as they say. But yeah, the acceptance, I think, is a journey. I'm still on that journey. There's
some really powerful stuff coming out here, and I can definitely resonate with a lot of what you're saying, I think I definitely grieved when I started to get the experience of symptoms. But even though I didn't know what it was when my periods were erratic and I didn't know what was happening to my body, I definitely went through a mourning period of saying goodbye to my younger, fertile self. I mean, I didn't want to have any more children. I have one daughter who's 13, and I didn't want to have more kids, but there was just something in me that had to go through that process of, I don't know what's coming, I don't know what's ahead of me, but there was definitely a sense of loss with the change that was coming. And obviously I said I'm going through it for eight years, so definitely, you know, and it was that acceptance of, you know, taking time. And I think because the generations before us, we weren't told what menopause, and my mum did them or menopause, or she didn't know what menopause or so, you know, it's taken eight years to figure out what is going on. And I think it's just those like, you say, being kind to yourself. And I think just talking to other women, you know, at a party or around, you know, someone's house with a cup of tea, and just saying, I feel awful. Why'd you feel awful? Well, I'm going through all these symptoms, but it's the older, wiser women saying, Oh yes, I know what this is. This is what it is. This is what you're going through. And then I think it's just breaking down those taboos and stigmas of just reaching out to people and talking and knowing you're not on your own with this and that there is support out there. But I think, think my mum was a lot more stoic, just that kind of generation of getting on with it. I think our generation, maybe is looking at it a bit more differently in terms of, it's okay to ask for help, rather than is something I went through and I just got on with it, raise the kids, went to work, but I think, as you were saying, you know, making time for your children, right, and getting that help that you need,
tell me any thoughts.
Think I'm still in denial.
I want to do it all, and I don't want to have any physical or emotional or social limitations, but I do think that, yeah, you know, I am coming to a point where it's about reconfiguring how I do things and and pacing myself more and building in time, yes, for having that self compassion and having having breast and doing things with people, not, not trying to do it all myself, and being in independent in that way. So, yeah, definitely. But still, that part of me that like, yeah, wants to juggle everything and get it all, get it all done and at the same speed with the same energy levels that I had, you know. 10 years ago.
