Women fighting for YOUR right to have a hot flush in the office
Falling asleep in front of the CEO. Panic attacks. Going blank mid-speech. Millions are scared to admit they struggle with the menopause at work. So hurrah for the...
DOROTHY BYRNE, head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, was in a meeting with her boss when she felt the all-too-familiar heat rising from her feet to her face, which she knew would be pillar-box red and glistening with perspiration.
To make matters worse, Kevin Lygo, then director of television and content, was so concerned that Dorothy had a terrible fever that he told her to go home immediately and rest. Squirming with embarrassment, Dorothy tried to explain she wasn’t unwell, but Kevin insisted: ‘You’ve gone all red and you’re sweating, you obviously have a fever.’
Too self-conscious to keep arguing, Dorothy returned to her desk to collect her bag, telling her team: ‘I’m going home, because my boss has never heard of the menopause.’ Dorothy did not, in fact, have a fever, but was simply experiencing a hot flush, something that affects most women when hormones drop in midlife.
A survey by medical research charity Wellbeing of
Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside a family.
HELEN MIRREN
Women three years ago revealed that half of women feel these symptoms make their work life worse, while a quarter have considered leaving their jobs because of menopause symptoms.
In Ireland, 350,000 women in the workplace are aged between 45 and 65, meaning there’s a very good chance a woman is enduring the menopause silently in any given workplace.
And yet there is so little understanding, or discussion, about the impact of falling fertility hormones, oestrogen and progesterone, that women like Dorothy, who have reached the top of their game, feel compelled to hide their symptoms.
‘For years I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time without waking, boiling hot, and once the sweat cooled on my skin, I’d then be freezing cold,’ recalls Dorothy.
‘I work a 60-hour week, am a single parent to my daughter, who I was supporting through exams at the time, and we would regularly visit my elderly mother 200 miles away, so I felt utterly exhausted.’
DOROTHY adds: ‘My experience mirrors that of countless women, juggling lots of demands while coping with these symptoms, in their 40s and 50s.
‘Like me, most won’t want to tell people at work they’re exhausted because of the menopause, fearing it’ll be seen as a sign of weakness. But some days I was so tired I’d go down to the basement car park and sleep in my car for an hour.
‘To my great embarrassment, I fell asleep in the first meeting we had with our new chief executive at Channel 4, then again in the front row at the Edinburgh Film Festival while my boss was giving a speech.’
These daily struggles to perform, at the same time as coping with the so-called change of life — the median age for the perimenopause to begin is 47.5 and the average woman experiences natural menopause, when periods stop entirely, aged 51 — are most likely behind alarming statistics showing that, between the ages of 45 and 55, a quarter of women consider leaving the workforce.
More worrying still, they may help to explain why this is also the decade in which suicide is most common for women, with eight in every 100,000 taking their own lives.
Dr Shirin Lakhani, a former GP, who now practises as an intimate health doctor, regularly sees women who are struggling to cope in midlife.
‘They are in tears when they come to see me and will say, “I don’t feel mentally able to cope”,’ says Dr Lakhani. ‘They have reached the end of their tethers and their relationships and employment are at risk. Some have already left their jobs as a result of panic attacks and exhaustion from lack of sleep.
‘People talk about hot flushes, but don’t realise that issues with cognition, mood swings, anger and an inability to cope with day-to-day life, are all caused by hormonal imbalance at this time of life.’
Successful businesswoman Loretta Dignam underwent a personal hell with her experience of the menopause, which caused all sorts of physical symptoms, not to mention psychological effects such as ‘feeling old’ and ‘past it.’
‘Personally, I was terrified of talking about menopause in the workplace,’ Loretta admits. ‘I was in denial. I didn’t want anyone to work out my age,’ she says. Her journey to wellness led her to set up the Menopause Hub, a clinic that offers a variety of services, including specialist menopause doctors, psychologists, physiotherapists and acupuncturists.
‘Knowing what I know now, I’d certainly have done it differently I’d have sought help in my 40s, and talked about it more openly with friends and colleagues.
‘Women are in such denial about this,’ asserts Loretta. ‘We’re in an ageist society, more than we care to admit.’
While younger women have felt more able to talk openly about the demands of juggling early motherhood with a career, it’s certainly true that those in midlife are much less willing to discuss the sleeplessness, anxiety, mood swings and other physical symptoms they struggle to overcome.
This, Dorothy Byrne believes, is because it comes with the added worry of colleagues or, even worse, those who hire and fire, assuming they should be put out to pasture. ‘I looked younger than I was and thought if people knew my age there would be prejudice against me at work,’ she says. ‘With good reason. When I was in my early 50s, I once suggested a woman for a job and was told that at 46, she was “too old”. ‘When I finally did reveal my age, a few years ago, in a newspaper article about influential people, it felt like “coming out”.’ ‘I’m now 67 — one of the oldest female executives in TV — and talk proudly about my age and actually younger female colleagues come to ask my advice. They think: “Dorothy’s been around, she might know.” And they’re right, I have an enormous amount to contribute because of my experience. Employers don’t want to lose that.’ As she points out: ‘Men are not ashamed to get
‘Symptoms stop women going for promotion at a stage where they might want a final push up the ladder’
old. They show off their silver hair as it’s supposed to make them appear wise. What message are we giving, not just to young women but young men, by behaving as if there’s something shameful about the natural ageing of a woman, in which menopause plays a significant part?’
Dorothy experienced a relatively late menopause and her symptoms first struck when she was 52. She first tried herbal remedies. However, the night sweats continued for three years, until, at 55, she sought help from her GP, who prescribed Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).
Now symptom-free, rather than breathing a sigh of relief and pulling the ladder up after her, Dorothy has instead been instrumental in drawing up Channel 4’s policy on supporting women through menopause.
Since last October, when the policy was introduced, those going through ‘the change’ have a right to be paid sick leave, flexible hours — for instance, to avoid travelling at peak times — an assessment to ensure symptoms are not being exacerbated by their working environment, desk fans and access to a quiet room.
‘We’re the first British media company to have a menopause policy and had an event to celebrate its introduction,’ says Dorothy, proudly. ‘As well as the support offered, it’s important to raise awareness of the many unpleasant symptoms that accompany it.’
Lauren Chiren was one of those women who suffered crippling symptoms, so bad that she left her senior executive role in the financial services industry and her six-figure salary.
Having previously ‘thrived on complexity’, Lauren was so baffled by how challenging her job suddenly felt in her early 40s, that she feared she had early-onset dementia. ‘Making decisions became that bit trickier.
‘I couldn’t always find the confidence to speak up in meetings and before I knew it I was outside the circle of trust,’ recalls Lauren.
‘Lack of sleep led to anxiety, which impacted my self-confidence, and eventually I got quite paranoid about what colleagues might be thinking about me.’
As a single mum to one son, Lauren ensured she had support at home — a nanny, gardener and cleaner — so her struggles were largely in the office, where she regularly worked 12-hour days.
Although previously valued as a senior member of staff, and a mentor to more junior women, she felt unsupported by superiors.
She says: ‘There was little attempt to encourage or support me and, as a senior leader, I didn’t feel I could ask for help because I didn’t want to give them any ammunition to get rid of me.’
Aged 45, feeling unable to carry on and too worried by fears of what a dementia diagnosis would do to her career to seek medical help, Lauren quit her job.
It was only once she had stepped away from corporate life that she finally consulted her GP who ‘put two and two together’, and ran blood tests which showed she had gone through a relatively early menopause. Lauren had missed the tell-tale sign of absent periods due to being on the contraceptive Pill.
The doctor prescribed HRT which, to Lauren’s relief, quickly cured the symptoms she had feared were due to dementia.
‘We still live in a patriarchal society when it comes to work here so, I think it’s going to take another decade before we see significant shifts in terms of the support women get at this stage of life becoming the norm,’ says Lauren.
In 2012 a female employee was able to prove that BT plc had discriminated against her on the grounds of her gender by failing to take account of her menopause symptoms — stress and poor concentration — in the same way it would other medical conditions.
Then, in 2018, an officer with the
Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service won a case against her employer. She had been prescribed soluble medication for cystitis, one of the symptoms of her menopause.
Concerned that male colleagues had inadvertently drunk it, she raised the alarm and was subjected to an investigation by the health and safety team, followed by disciplinary action, before being dismissed on the grounds of gross misconduct.
The woman was reinstated and compensated after an industrial tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed and that her employer discriminated against her due to a ‘protected characteristic’, that is menopause.
Consultant gynaecologist Haitham Hamoda says that, as more than three-quarters of women experience adverse side effects of the menopause — which lasts an average of seven years — employers must be prepared to provide additional support.
‘Brain fog, memory and concentration problems, low mood and joint aches are all caused by oestrogen deficiency and can be treated with HRT,’ he says.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is the most effective treatment available to relieve symptoms caused by the menopause, according to current guidelines. Bio-identical hormones, which are more effective than some older types of HRT, are becoming a more preferred alternative as they have fewer side effects. Some women have been wary of using HRT since research back in 2003 linked it with an increased risk of breast cancer. However, subsequent studies have shown that the risk is small and, in fact, lower than that facing women who drink three glasses of wine a week or who are overweight.
‘Looking at benefit and risk there is a significant reduction in osteoporosis and cardio problems for women on HRT,’ says Mr Hamoda.
Kerry Sheldon-Jones, 52, found herself in a precarious financial position after leaving her job, as a lecturer in anatomy, physiology and beauty six years ago.
Standing in front of dozens of students, she suffered bouts of ‘brain fog’ so extreme she was unable to recall facts she had been teaching for years.
‘I also had depression, sleeplessness, hot flushes, exhaustion, night sweats, vaginal atrophy, painful intimacy, weight gain, aching bones and joints, and low self-esteem,’ recalls Kerry.
‘I always presumed my periods would stop and I’d get hot flushes when I was in menopause and had no idea that everything I was experiencing was because of a drop in the hormone progesterone during the peri-menopause.’
It wasn’t until a neighbour recommended she see her private gynaecologist, who prescribed bio-identical hormones - that she realised everything she was going through was down to the change of life.
KERRY, who had left her job several months earlier citing depression, felt better within days, so got back in touch with her employers and returned to work.
‘If employers were more aware of how the menopause can affect women and offered appropriate support, their retention rates would be higher,’ she says.
‘Coping with symptoms also affects women’s abilities to go for promotion, which is very unfair as they are at a stage of life where they might want a final push up the ladder.’
Kerry went on to study hormones and was part of the team, including doctors, who set up Equilibrium, a company specialising in hormone rebalancing clinics.
‘Doctors are given minimal menopause training so I wanted to do my bit to facilitate a service to ensure women have access to specialist care,’ says Kerry.
Diane Danzebrink, who founded an organisation providing education, advice and emotional support to women and employers, feels similarly motivated to spare other women the same fate she once faced.
She was working as an equine physiotherapist when a hysterectomy plunged her into menopause, aged 45, and the sudden loss of hormones left her anxious to the point of feeling suicidal and unable to work.
It was after she came close to driving her car into the path of a lorry on a dual carriageway near her home with the intention ‘to end it all’ that her husband, Martin, an equine dentist, took her to their GP who prescribed HRT.
‘I felt better within days but, checking Google afterwards, I saw the suicide statistics for women around my age and was horrified,’ says Diane. ‘How many of these could have been saved with the right information and support?’
That support, according to Dorothy Byrne, must certainly include employers adopting menopause policies, like the one she helped draw up at Channel 4.
Diane Danzebrink agrees: ‘Too many women leave their jobs because of their symptoms at this stage of life. It really is time employers took the necessary steps to support and retain us.’
FOR more information go to themenopausehub.ie.
Most women won’t say they’re exhausted because of the menopause, fearing it’s seen as a sign of weakness. But some days I’d go down to the basement and sleep in my car for an hour DOROTHY BYRNE, HEAD OF NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS, CHANNEL 4 ‘Cognition issues, mood swings, anger and an inability to cope with day-to-day life are caused by the menopause’