11 October 2021

Dr Belinda Steffan, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Business School, explores her research on menopause and how it affects women in the workplace.

October is 'World Menopause Awareness Month', reflecting a broader awareness of menopause and the impact of menopause symptoms.

We are currently seeing greater awareness of menopause at work in organisations, in the media and more recently in employment tribunals. For many people who experience menopause, this is a relief as their experiences of menopause symptoms can emerge from the shadows as the taboo falls away. The other benefit of an increasingly vibrant conversation around menopause is that we, in the academic community, have an opportunity to learn more about menopause experiences at work.

The menopause cocktail

When women have spoken to me about their menopause journey, it is often through a narrative of fear and unknowing about how an individual cocktail of the 34 menopause symptoms might affect them on any given day. One of the most common phrases used is 'brain fog' and feeling 'fuzzy'.

While physical symptoms such as sweating and fatigue are generally spoken about in a matter-of-fact discourse, I have noted through my research that women speak about matters of the mind through a discourse of fear:

  • How can they hide the effects at work?
  • Are these shifts in cognition permanent?
  • What happens if they make a serious mistake at work?
  • How can they stop feeling overwhelmed?

Temporary symptoms: little immediate reassurance

It is important to note that menopause symptoms are (generally) temporary. They are experienced throughout the peri-menopause phase, and while this can be brief for some, for others symptoms can be experienced for up to a decade.

While the temporary nature of change is reassuring, we should also remember that these symptoms are generally experienced between the ages of mid-40s to late 50s — a time when women are often fully engaged in paid work, possibly caring for their children, and also coping with challenges of caring for their parents.

Menopause symptoms 'only' being a problem for a 'few years' is of little comfort to the immediate reality of many women. Women can understandably struggle, in the throes of the menopausal mind and all that it brings, to rationalise the temporality of their experience, especially at work.

Menopause and mind

As our project on Supporting Healthy Ageing at Work (SHAW) moves to interview people about their experiences of both menopause and cognitive ageing and decline, it is worth remembering that there is a significant overlap between these two themes of health and wellbeing.

Below I provide some of the quotes from my recent study on menopause at work, where working women speak about their memory concerns and the impact of brain fog.

  • I get embarrassed at forgetting things. Often certain words just will not come, which I find frustrating and can make me reluctant to speak up. (age 47)
  • Struggling to find the right words in a meeting… makes me look incompetent at times. (age 45)
  • Loss of confidence, loss of memory — unable to retain key pieces of information. Unable to remember what I was saying half way through a sentence… (age 51)
  • A sense of being overwhelmed at times as brain fog descends. (age 48)
  • I have lost confidence due to my forgetfulness and anxiety. I feel that colleagues do not value me the way they used to. (age 52)
  • I feel like my mind is not my own. I do things, forget things, repeat. I am just in a total muddle. (age 53)
  • Brain fog, loss of confidence, and ability to complete tasks that previously were ok. (age 48)

The interruption of self-confidence is a recurring theme from the three different menopause studies that I have worked on in the past few years. While confidence is listed as one of the 34 symptoms, I would suggest that it is more than a symptom.

Lost confidence seems to underpin the emotions, anxiety, and fear of menopause and mind. Lowered confidence has shown itself to be the pathway to internalising gendered ageism at work, being more open to emotional distress, and seeing a life-long self-confidence as a declining resource.

While menopause symptoms are temporary, and this is an important point that we all must remember, my concern is that an interrupted or challenged sense of confidence in oneself and at work might be more enduring. How self-confidence fits with health is something we plan to explore in the SHAW project, but there is a clear pathway to menopause-related threat to confidence and overall wellbeing.

What is interesting about self-confidence is that there are some positive stories about how enduring confidence has helped to defend against the impact of menopause symptoms at work. As with many individual differences, confidence is a deeply personal experience.

As SHAW explores menopause and mind in much greater detail over the coming months, we ourselves as researchers will be mindful of the often unacknowledged role of self-confidence on the impact of menopause and mind on health and well-being at work.