My mother and grandmother both swore they “didn’t have menopause in their day”.
Maybe they were genetically lucky.
Maybe it’s the frequency illusion*. Or maybe we have simply reached the point where people are far more willing to talk about what was happening.
Either way, in the space of a generation, menopause seems to have gone from almost invisible to everywhere.
And in the main, I think that is a hugely helpful thing. People are thinking about it, talking about it, and workplaces have had to prove they are doing more than buying a couple of new fans from IKEA, brushing off their hands and marking “menopause support” as done.
But there is one thing about all this progress that still… irks me.
With many aspects of inclusion, we have become better at asking whether the environment itself is contributing to the problem. Menopause will affect almost all women at some point, so it is hardly a niche issue.
Yet we still seem remarkably quick to turn the spotlight back on the woman herself, focusing on symptoms, adjustments and coping strategies before asking whether the workplace itself is making things harder.
And whether we should get the IKEA fan in pink or lavender.
In other words, yay, we are talking about menopause far more. But I’m not convinced we have completely stopped treating the woman like an alarm that needs silencing, rather than a signal that something around her may need attention.
The blind spot isn't menopause, it's where we look for the problem
Thankfully, there are already companies that are shining beacons of great practice here, and menopause is probably not quite the inclusivity blind spot it was ten years ago. But I do think it exposes an easy mental trap: when someone is suddenly struggling, it can be quicker to examine the woman than the environment around her.
The symptom is only half the story
If you’ve been lucky enough to have never had a hot flush, believe me when I say they are dreadful. It’s not just being hot, it’s like being teleported, mid-sentence, into a sprint across the desert.
In your winter woollies.
But try that in a polyester uniform or tailored suit, under bright lights, in a room with no ventilation.
A sleepless night is tricky.
Add in rotating shift patterns, back-to-back meetings, hours of commuting or a company culture that treats exhaustion as a badge of honour, or going home on time as a lack of commitment.
Brain fog is frustrating.
But when that’s happening in a role with constant interruption, context switching, little thinking time and pressure to make fast, accurate decisions, it’s no wonder that some women are just tapping out.
CIPD research found that 17% had considered leaving work because of a lack of support around menopause symptoms, whilst 6% had already left.
Losing experienced talent because we haven’t addressed this properly is not just theory. It’s already happening.
Better questions
So of course we can ask:
“What can she do, in order to cope better with the challenges”,
but at the same time we should be asking
“what are we doing here that might be making it harder than it needs to be?”
Every woman and experience of menopause is different but there are some universal principles that apply. Sometimes the answer will be an adjustment for the individual. Other times it might be a change to the working environment. Usually, great support will involve a bit of both.
When someone struggles in your organisation, do you examine the person first, or the conditions around them.
If your organisation is working through its menopause support or action plan, that’s what our Menopause at Work programme is designed to help with.
*Frequency illusion, or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: when something becomes personally relevant, you suddenly start noticing it everywhere. Like collagen tablets, dark-circle eye masks, or fantasy solo holidays you’ve been looking at.
**In its 2023 survey: CIPD: Menopause in the workplace, Employee Experience workplace, numbers still cited in 2026.