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    Here’s What Workplace Menopause Guidelines Could Look Like

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    The Menopause Society announced a new initiative to support workers during this life stage. Whether employers implement it is another story.Two years ago, Dr. Stephanie Faubion stood at the microphone at a meeting of the Menopause Society thinking, “This is going to be a problem.” Someone in the room had asked a question about the challenges of going through menopause in the workplace, and the conversation had turned to ways employers could step in. Dr. Faubion, the organization’s medical director, worried that asking for additional provisions for women would fuel more gender discrimination — if women required special treatment, employers would have more reason to not hire or promote them. “What are we going to do, give women a cold room?” she remembers saying.But last spring, she and other researchers published a study on the costs of menopause at the office that helped change her thinking. Women were missing work — $1.8 billion worth of working time each year. Some quit altogether because of menopause. “I was like, alright, we can’t just bury our heads in the sand over this,” Dr. Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health, said. “We’re going to have do something.”Today, the Menopause Society rolled out an initiative providing employers with guidance on how to support women going through menopause. It includes tips for managers to talk about menopause at work and policies employers can consider, like ensuring that the health care plans they offer cover treatment options for menopause symptoms.The program, called Making Menopause Work, also provides suggestions for making it easier for menopausal employees to get through the workday, like flexible bathroom breaks for those dealing with unpredictable or heavy bleeding, and improving ventilation and using uniforms made with breathable fabrics so that hot flashes are less uncomfortable. There are talking points workers can bring to their employers and an assessment to gauge how well a workplace responds to menopause.The initiative is the latest symbol of growing recognition that menopause takes a toll on women in the workplace. This year, Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that employers are legally obligated to make “reasonable adjustments” for women experiencing menopause symptoms if they are severe enough to amount to a disability. In 2021, the European Menopause and Andropause Society released its own recommendations urging employers to address menopause in the workplace through measures like explicitly covering menopause in sick time policies, and allowing women in customer-facing jobs to take breaks to manage symptoms like hot flashes. Some companies in the United States and abroad have started offering menopause-specific benefits.The question now is whether all this will translate into actual change.“The cynic in me is like, ‘Yeah, good luck with that,’” Dr. Faubion said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Your Body and Mind Change in Midlife

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      Midlife, typically defined as ages 40 to 60, is an inflection point. It’s a time when our past behaviors begin to catch up with us and we start to notice our bodies and minds aging — sometimes in frustrating or disconcerting ways. But it’s also an opportunity: What our older years will look and feel […] More

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      in Elections

      A Rock Climber Finds a Softer Strength

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      I don’t know what time it was when my husband at the time, the rock climber Tommy Caldwell, finally scrambled over the summit. The sun had risen sometime during the first part of the climb and had set again hours later. I squinted up at him, tired eyes burning as I watched his shadow moving in the beam of my headlight. He had just completed the second free ascent of the Direct Route on the northwest face of Half Dome, a 2,000-foot climb in Yosemite National Park.We were elite professional climbers, and this was what we did best. Sometimes we made history together; other times I supported him in his feats, belaying and carrying all the gear. Either way, the days were long and hard.The climber Todd Skinner spent 61 days in 1993 working to establish the Direct Route, then considered the most difficult big wall climb in the world, before reaching the top. On our climb in 2007, our 2 a.m. wake-up, more than 24 hours earlier, hadn’t even felt all that early to me. Sleeping in past midnight? That meant what I was getting up for wasn’t that rad, that hard core. Tommy made it to the top in a day, adding a move that made the climb more difficult than the one Mr. Skinner had pioneered. It felt routine.Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing. Ascending ropes with bloody knuckles and a heavy pack thousands of feet off the ground was as conventional to me as grabbing the bananas and apples in the produce section: just part of my day. Climbers pride themselves on being better than normal people. Not just in the “I climbed a mountain and you didn’t” type of way, but in the fabric of how we approach life. How we eat, where we sleep, the stories we walk away with: It’s all better.By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a walking archetype of how to succeed in that world because of the belief system I followed: suck it up, persevere, win. I was used to pushing the level of climbing further, used to doing things that no other women had done — and even, a couple of times, things that no guys had done.I specialized in free climbing, a particular (and particularly challenging) discipline that requires a climber to rely on her gear only for protection from a fall, not for any assistance in moving up the rock. I had free-climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan three times, by three independent routes. Elsewhere in Yosemite, I had established a new route in 2008, Meltdown, that was widely viewed then as the hardest traditional climb in the world, not repeated until 2018. (“Traditional” meaning I depended on a rope suspended by gear I placed myself, rather than on bolts permanently installed in the rock.) For a decade, I had appeared in climbing films and on the pages of climbing magazines. Pushing through the pain, sacrificing my body, shoving my fear away: It’s all what made me better than the rest. I liked being better than the rest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Ginsburg did not give up her religion | Brief letters

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      Your obituary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (19 September) said she had abandoned her religion. On receiving an award from the Genesis Prize Foundation in 2018, she said: “I am a judge, raised and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice, for peace and for enlightenment runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition.” Does that sound like a woman who had abandoned her religion?Jonathan HoffmanLondon• I read the feature on menopause (22 September) with some bemusement. All these points were made by Germaine Greer 30 or 40 years ago. Wasn’t anyone else listening? And how sad that so many women feel obliged to cover up their lovely, empowering grey hair.Dr Brigid PurcellNorwich• When Nicola Sturgeon gives a TV press conference she is accompanied by a sign language interpreter. Not so for any English minister. Is this (a) contempt for the hard of hearing; (b) a kindly measure to spare them the nonsense; or (c) the inability of signers to convey gibberish?Elisabeth Leedham-GreenCambridge• I was intrigued to see an ad in the paper (19 September) for apartments in the former BBC Television Centre for sale at between £2.5m and £6m. It seems that this property developer sees Guardian readers like me to be more wealthy than I ever imagined.Rev Robin BrooksHeddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland• I’ve seen few £2 coins this year (Royal Mint to stop production of £2 and 2p coins due to excess stock, 18 September). Are most of them being stockpiled in 35mm film canisters?Robin MorrisOxford• Join the conversation – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit theguardian.com/letters More