For better or for worse, a community where many of us spend a major chunk of our waking hours is at work. We go to our jobs each day for a multitude of reasons—primarily to bring home a pay check, but also to be leaders and learners, mentors and managers, contributors and colleagues. No surprise, with all the media attention to menopause, interest in improving the experience at workplaces has caught fire—an idea that is not only making headlines, but also real-time headway.
With more employees speaking up, more employers are listening, especially women leaders going through it themselves, and forging change. According to the health care consultancy firm Mercer, 18 percent of large U.S. employers said they currently offer or plan to offer some kind of menopause support, up from just 4 percent in 2023. The Center for Work Life Law notes it is more and more common to leverage “menopause benefits as a way to attract and retain employees...a win-win situation.
An employer is doing the right thing by an employee, and at the same time, they’re reaping the benefits, because if they can retain that employee, then they’re keeping institutional knowledge and relationships.” Given the essential role women play in fueling the economy, and the vast need for gender parity and equity in the workforce, I am all in for solutions. Unfortunately, among the menopause accommodations I most often see touted, too many miss the mark. Some, like desk fans and cooling rooms, are mere surface level fixes and have short-term value at best, insufficient to meet the decade-plus of need that goes well beyond hot flashes.
Others, like flex-time and expanded benefits, are important but not likely available to women in low-wage or hourly or service jobs. And there is no employee in this country guaranteed meaningful federal protection under the law from discrimination on the basis of menopause. While the workplace is a vital forum for community, for sure, it is a tricky one to navigate and poses discussions that trigger a deep quandary for me.
I often feel like the resident naysayer—a voice I do not relish!—given how I long for a systemic approach for reimagining and reshaping how we work. Nor do I have interest in being the killjoy who pokes at CEOs or undermines their enthusiasm for taking on menopause, not when they seemingly have incentive to engage—economic, reputational, or otherwise—and not when we need their influential voices in the mix. Yet I know I might come across sounding that way.
We stand to waste a ripe moment if all the heightened momentum for menopause only results in window dressing in the workplace. There are common sense policies for which we can advocate—to both help bring about immediate relief as well as spur long-term cultural shifts, while doing as much as possible to protect employee privacy and provide a bulwark against potential blowback. Here is a list of benefits and supports that I have put on my own wish list, drawn from a mix of professional and legal experts, as well as personal experience and perspective.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
