Menopause and work: progress report

Why more still needs to be done to support workers experiencing the menopause

Summary:

Women and other people experiencing menopause still need more support at work. Jo Brewis and Deborah Garlick review the available evidence and consider what progress has been made in the past five years.

Writing for Occupational Health [at Work] in 2018, we argued that employers should develop workplace menopause interventions to support employees who are struggling with this reproductive life stage. Since then, a huge amount has changed in this space and, in the UK particularly, there have been many positive developments. In this article, we take stock of the current menopause-and-work landscape and consider how far we have come since 2018 – and what remains to be done.

The article focuses on four key areas:

• whether menopause is still a pressing workplace issue
• what UK organisations have done to address
• menopause issues at work
• recent research
• government policy on menopause at work…

Jo Brewis is professor of people and organisations at The Open University Business School.

Deborah Garlick is the chief executive officer of Henpicked: Menopause in the Workplace.

Author: Brewis J, Garlick D

Tags Menopause

Occupational Health at Work June/July 2023 (vol. 20/1) pp29-33

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