By Elliott West
“A full Thelma and Louise, off the cliff car crash”.
Kate Muir, author of ‘The Great Menopause Scandal’.
Introduction
The menopause is supposed to be a natural part of a woman’s ageing process but for many it is a time of great distress, struggle and a sense of abandonment from the medical profession that should be correctly diagnosing and supporting you through this process. An abandonment that is present in the workplace too. As a man, I can’t begin to imagine what this is like for a woman to have to go through. One minute you are living a routine life and the next hit with the perimenopause, the time before a woman stops having periods, the beginning of a biological journey that I would liken to a car crash waiting to happen. A ticking time bomb that produces various pieces of shrapnel along its path including hot flushes and night sweats that could be likened to experiencing the heat of the Sahara desert, the embarrassment of vaginal dryness, high and low mood swings, heart palpitations, headaches, migraines, muscle aches, joint pain and problems with memory loss and concentration. A condition that affects 16 million women on average.
The Menopause Scandal
Typically occurring in women between the ages of 45 – 55 but this can fluctuate in individual cases. For the time that it lasts months or years, it feels like being a prisoner in your own body with a muffled cry for help that often can’t be heard. The wonder drug created to relieve the symptoms of the menopause is HRT (Hormone replacement therapy), a drug that helps replace the estrogen that the body stops making and medication that is prescribed by your GP. However, this medication is not as widely available as you might think and I have heard of cases where women have had to meet in car parks to get supplies or even turn to the black market for something that should be as widely available as paracetamol.
The government has tried to tackle this issue, bringing in changes to legislation that allows women to purchase medication from April 2023 for the equivalent of two prescription charges for a year’s supply (£18.70 x2) through a prescription prepayment certificate (PPC) but the actual condition continues to be failed to be recognised as a protected characteristic in the 2010 Equality Act. This means that although a woman could be struggling with the many symptoms of the menopause in the workplace, the employer can turn a blind eye because nothing is in enshrined in law to protect the individual.
“Mine were not physical but they were psychological. And to the point where I didn’t know how to get out of the blackness for quite some months”.
Carol Vorderman
Prejudice
I was shocked to see Carol Vorderman’s recent appearance at a Women and Equalities Committee meeting with Mariella Frostrup in the Houses of Parliament. Here, Carol gave a very accurate and clear assessment of what is happening in society and the workplace regarding the menopause. Carol, who is a patron of the campaign group Menopause Mandate, was stonewalled by the Conservative ministers responsible for this issue. Both failed to turn up to the hearing with Maria Caulfield, minister for women ducking the meeting, preferring to spend her time in the House of Commons tea room instead.
Carol was already enraged by the comments made by Kemi Badenoch, women and equalities minister, who had dismissed calls for leave to be granted for women going through the menopause, saying they were “from a left-wing perspective”and a pilot scheme would not help. Those that did attend the committee heard some appalling stories of one woman becoming so desperate that she contemplated taking her own life and another who had to hand in her notice at work for to the brain fog she experienced as a result of the menopause, making her incapable of doing her job.
Carol Vorderman who suffered herself as a result of the menopause, went through a very bad period of depression in 2016, lasting six months. She didn’t know at the time what was causing it but it was on later on reflection that this was occurring at the time when she should have been having her period. A time that is gradually extinguished by the menopause as periods slowly stop and the ovaries lose their reproductive function.
Afterthoughts
The menopause is a condition that most people know a female friend or relative that is experiencing or has experienced. There is a staggering statistic that 1 in every 100 women experience the menopause before the age of 40, described as being peri-menopausal or premature menopausal. A recent report by a House of Commons select committee put forward 12 recommendations to help tackle the many issues of the menopause, a report that was wasn’t published for three months and in the end, only one of the twelve recommendations was accepted. Despite campaigns by celebrities such as Carol Vorderman and a World Menopause Day, this condition continues to remain in the shadows with little help available and many women suffering in silence.
