"Menopause Is Causing The UK Economy To Haemorrhage Talent" What next?

Today, the UK government ruled against 'menopause leave' to be piloted in the UK, arguing that such a pilot could be 'counterproductive'. The pilot suggestion, initiated by the Women and Equalities Committee, came about due to the 'glacial progress' the government were making on menopause support, even though there's an apparent 'ambitious' plan to improve help (BBC).

Right now, the largest demographic of women in the UK workforce is between 50-54 (UK Gov), ripe menopause age who are also navigating a midlife that perhaps isn't all it's cracked up to be. And let's not forget that by the time a woman reaches 51, not only is she 'the average' age for menopause (BMS), but she's also bucking the trend in the divorce stats (ONS), is in a suicide category that's grown by 6% in the last 20 years (ONS) and is considering if she can financially get by if she quits her career (Peppy).

Although menopause symptom support is vital for every woman, don't we also need to address the underlying cause that's not related to a hormone decline? There's more to midlife than the menopause, the psychological journals tell us that by the time we get to 40+ we're edging towards our middle adulthood and we'll start to focus more on our mortality than any childlike ambitions we once had. Women often say they start to feel invisible because we live in a society that's not yet reinvented it's view on midlife; rather than see the power, talent and wisdom women have gleaned through experience and success, they see a woman passed her best.

Our mothers, mothers, mothers perhaps didn't have the mental tools or physical research to change the destiny of a woman's midlife, but we do. Our hormones decline. We can ease the decline with body identical intervention or choose the natural route, it's a personal choice. Either way, lifestyles need to change, exercise needs to be loved and eating for heart and bone health has just got to be how we roll. We cannot relinquish the responsibility for our health to a patch we clamp to our hip. We are what we eat and how we move more than ever before.

When society is telling a woman like me to slow down, when all I want to do is speed up, it reminds me that it's our responsibility to change the conversation. Men age as the silver fox armed with statesmen like wisdom, well, so do women. It's a mindset and a choice. As soon as the world can catch onto that revelation, we might all be in a better place.

Is the government aiming to determine what value a woman can bring to the party based on her hormones, or is it circling the precipice of more reasons not to work? The stats tell us something needs to change urgently, but who does that responsibility fall to?

Being an advocate of personal responsibility, I believe we can take the lead on our health, get armed with the facts and start to change the rhetoric ourselves. When we start to see that hitting midlife is fraught with a 'what's it all about anyway and what if it doesn't go how I planned' mentality, supporting those kind of fears, maybe a really good place to start.

I am writing this as a women who arrived at her own midlife feeling like it was all a lie. After surviving breast cancer in my early forty's, navigating my own early menopause for seven years naturally until needing help due to further surgery, I can say, hand on heart, there was more to my dismay than my declining hormones. It took a revolution in my own life to find the answers.