Is menopause killing women’s work, or is ‘garbage data’ trashing the brand? A Senate inquiry must decide

She said commercial stakeholders – in an industry estimated globally to be worth $600 billion – had infiltrated the Senate inquiry in an attempt to shape government policy.

“I want to add to the calls of my colleagues this morning and urge the committee to consider the influence of commercial and vested interests in menopause generally, and this inquiry specifically,” White told committee members.

“The number of commercial players in menopause is increasing incredibly rapidly, with many seeking to shape norms, knowledge, practices, investments and policies in ways that have the potential to damage individuals and public health.”

White said while there is no doubt some women “are terribly affected by menopause”, Jean Hailes data showed more young women are affected by heavy periods and pelvic pain than older women are by menopause.

One statistic repeated in submissions to the Senate committee and during its hearings around the country is that women retire 7½ years earlier than men, which it is implied is largely due to unaddressed menopause.

Grace Molloy, chief executive of the menopause workplace accreditation agency Menopause Friendly Australia, is just one of many who quoted it, telling the inquiry Australian women leave work 7.4 years earlier than men.

But the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data states that the retirement gender gap is half that at 3.7 years, with men retiring at 66.9 years and women at 63.2.

Molloy told the Sydney hearing that “most of us will be grappling with menopause at work” and “three in four of us will be experiencing problematic menopause symptoms”.

But representative data collected by Professor Susan Davis and Monash University’s Women’s Health Research Program found 83 per cent of perimenopausal women and 60 to 70 per cent of postmenopausal women in Australia “do not experience moderately to severely bothersome symptoms”.

“For many women, the menopause is a relief from menstrual symptoms and concern about contraception,” Davis noted.

“Available data has shown that the majority of women in employment at midlife, 80 per cent, rate their work ability as good to excellent; only 3 per cent to 6.5 per cent rate their work ability as poor.”

At the Melbourne hearing, Davis warned “bastardisation” of her data had appeared in at least one submission, altering the published statistic that 3.3 per cent of women said they have poor work ability to “saying that 30 per cent of women can’t work well because of menopause”.

Her research, conducted over decades, suggests a cluster of societal factors impacting women around the age of perimenopause (when hormones start fluctuating) and menopause (when periods stop) are putting pressure on women, while menopause is being blamed for the effects of this “midlife collision”.

“Placing major emphasis on menopause may be distracting from the core issues for midlife women in employment: less career progression than male counterparts due to time out for children, job dissatisfaction etc, combining childcare/family caring and trying to perform well at work, shift work, financial stress/insecurity, poor general health,” Davis submitted.

“Menopause occurs at an age for women where work, personal health and carer responsibilities collide. It is not all about the biology of menopause.”

Calls for menopause leave to be managed into women’s employment agreements had not been supported by working women consulted for 2017 research by Melbourne University Professor Martha Hickey, chair of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Davis said.

Hickey says the best available data, found in Jean Hailes’ annual Women’s Health study, does not show women are quitting due to menopause.

“We have also done a big study among health workers, mostly women, and similarly, they felt their work productivity was good,” Hickey said. “They specifically said they didn’t want to be singled out as a problem group.”

That data that 900,000 women left the workforce in the UK is a piece of junk. That is unvalidated, messed up, marketing corporate-speak.

Professor Susan Davis at the Senate inquiry into issues related to perimenopause and menopause

Eye-grabbing social media posts by commercial providers about sweeping consequences of menopause are “about money primarily; it’s an opportunity to make money out of women”, she said. “People don’t know how to discriminate what is real from what is fake information.”

Asked at the hearing what senators should look out for, Susan Davis highlighted “catastrophising” of menopause and labelled much of the statistical information being presented to them as rubbish.

Davis called out inaccurate statements about depression and menopause, saying the biggest predictor of depression during menopause is depression before the transition. “In this country, 30 per cent of women aged 18 to 39 have moderate to severe depression, and that drops to 15 per cent at menopause,” she said.

“We need not catastrophise it, and we need not to jump into workplace policies that have people certifying workplaces for menopause when we don’t even know what that means; we don’t even know what women want.”

In the UK, scaled-up survey figures quoted in the media suggest that 1 million women there have already left jobs because they don’t get menopause support.

“That data that 900,000 women left the workforce in the UK is a piece of junk,” says Davis. “That is unvalidated, messed up, marketing corporate-speak based on a survey of a thousand women who took time off work because of infertility, pregnancy and menstrual problems.”

While there are women who say they feel like they have to leave the workforce, and that menopause is breaking up their marriages and having a detrimental impact on their lives, “I implore you to look at the quality data … not the voices that are yelling the loudest,” she says.

Director of the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion at Work, Sydney University workplace professor Elizabeth Hill, shares Davis’ and White’s concerns that some of the claims being made at the inquiry could do harm to midlife working women.

The co-convenor of the Australian Work and Family Policy Roundtable and the Body@Work research project, Hill said “the massive global conversation” around menstrual policies, menopause and fertility adjustments, and supports in the workplace is splitting feminists.

Some are very enthusiastic about enhancing gender equality at work via recognition of the female body, others say it brings great risks.

“Those who are deeply disturbed by this move argue it can lead to biological essentialism, and positions women as a problem in the workplace, and any measures to manage women’s bodies and care responsibilities could become a disincentive to employ women workers,” Hill said.

“The suggestion that women are inherently predisposed to leaving work or retiring early due to menopause poses significant risk to women’s retirement security and women’s retention at work. The point being, we don’t know,” she said.

A plus, however, of the focus on menopause is de-stigmatising and normalising topics that were once taboo, and making helpful changes such as introducing more flexible work and temperature management in workplaces.

“There is emerging research evidence that does show menopause can be a source of gendered disadvantage at work, [for] lack of workplace supports and accommodations – because of the intersection of sex and age,” Hill said.

“It might affect participation and retention, but there is no statistically representative studies as far as we are aware.”

She echoed that the women’s health community is becoming increasingly concerned about commercialisation and monetisation of menopause responses when “not everyone experiences severe symptoms”.

“Women with chronic symptoms are faced with risks to their economic security, so the discussion needs to be nuanced and data-informed. The research evidence we have to date does not indicate a crisis.”

Workforce data shows women’s participation rate has been on a steep rise since the 1990s, and women aged 50 to 59 are the fastest growing sector, so “the argument women who reach the age of menopause are dropping out of the labor market in large numbers is not reflected in the data”.

As for Imogen Crump, whose hot flush and candour went viral, attracting thousands of thank-you messages from around the world – she provided an example of what menopausal women are doing at work routinely.

Though she says at the time “I couldn’t for the life of me get the words Xi Jinping out of my mouth”, after 40 seconds of fill-in chat by the hosts, she kept going.

Even with her other symptoms of ocular (visual disturbance) migraines, occasional brain fog, joint pain and the anxiety she experienced before starting menopause hormone therapy, Crump insists the quality of her work as a senior editor of Melbourne University publications remains unaffected.

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