Menopause shouldn’t be an invisible tax on women in the workplace

Menopause is a journey every woman, everywhere, undertakes.

At Maven Clinic, the women’s and family health company I founded and where I serve as CEO, our platform has served women going through menopause since 2015, but last year when the U.K. created a panel to understand how to support menopausal employees in the workforce, we saw the demand for workplace benefits skyrocket.

As our team came together to upgrade our menopause offering globally, the degree to which this complex and deeply personal condition is rendered almost completely invisible by society came into renewed focus.

By 2030, more than 47 million women globally are expected to enter menopause each year. Menopause symptoms can vary enormously, but they can be severe: disrupted sleep, debilitating joint pain, depression, and anxiety. In the U.K., nearly one in three women who were going through menopause said they had taken sick days for their symptoms; and a quarter of women with serious symptoms said it had caused them to leave their jobs.

How much of the workforce is impacted?

Women going through menopause make up a significant proportion of a company’s employee base. In the U.S., the median age of a woman in the workplace is about 42 years old, squarely within the range of perimenopause, when the earliest signs of menopause become noticeable.

In OECD countries, the number of older women in the workforce has grown by almost 50% in the past 20 years. These women are experienced: They have received specialized training and applied it on the job for two decades. They are potentially also managers who are responsible for coaching more junior colleagues and driving their companies forward. They’re woefully underserved by what’s on offer. Even with a condition severe enough to drive them to quit, 42% of women report never having spoken to their physician about their symptoms.

There are myriad factors at work here, but it all comes down to problems common across women’s health journeys: a lack of access to quality providers, misinformation about common courses of treatment, and stigma. The consequent high levels of individual suffering have major cost and talent implications for companies around the world.

At the nexus of work and well-being

Our lack of support for menopausal women who work comes at a time when the workforce as a whole is aging in the U.S. and other industrialized nations around the world. Stigma around menopause likely contributes to a…