M-badges? Oh do man up about the menopause, ladies . . .

Loose Women on ITV is the kind of mindless daytime chat show where women of a certain age talk about issues that concern them.

This week, host Andrea McLean has suggested a campaign to highlight the blight of the ‘change of life’ by encouraging women suffering from the menopause to wear ‘M’-badges. This would be particularly useful, she said, on public transport. ‘Women wear badges now on the train that say “baby on board” and people let them have a seat.’

Miss McLean, 48, says she’s still menopausal after a decade of debilitating hot flushes. she believes an M- badge would help people, especially men, understand the pain of menopause and encourage them to ‘cut sufferers a bit of slack’, maybe even give up their seats.

It is, of course, a daft idea. Yes, some women suffer terribly, not only from hot flushes, but from mood swings, depression and anxiety. But most women cope stoically with lesser symptoms, and I’d be astonished if any woman would want to shout about the fact that she was going through ‘the change’.

That hasn’t stopped england’s Chief Medical officer sally Davies — the personification of the nanny state — from jumping on the menopause bandwagon. she has called for businesses to offer guidelines to help staff deal with the menopause, including flexible working arrangements.

Meanwhile, public service union UNIsoN is demanding more breaks during the working day for menopausal women and that bosses allow them leave if they want it.

The problem, I would suggest, is that far from improving female workers’ conditions, this could stop employers from promoting them or taking them on at all.

The fact is, M- badges and a ‘menopause clause’ for employees could result in women talking themselves out of jobs.

We can’t complain on one hand about gender pay gaps — HsBC this week reported an astonishing disparity of 60 per cent — and on the other indulge in special pleading because of the biology of our bodies.

The truth is women have managed the menopause for millennia. And if we truly want equality, I suspect we’ll need to learn to man up, as it were.