What All Bosses Should Do About Menopause
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The other week, a news alert caught my attention: “Women Always Had Hot Flashes at Work. Now They’re Done Hiding Menopause.” In the article, a senior lawyer described her deep appreciation when a colleague saw her suffering from a hot flash and presented her with a pretty folding fan. Hot flashes are but one of dozens of disruptions—brain fog, headaches, anxiety, erratic periods, and urinary tract infections, among them—women experience on the road to menopause that can last for as long as a decade.
Truth be told, the article and the anecdote made me more irritated than inspired. Here was yet another slick story about the importance of retaining older women in the workforce that offered less than stellar solutions. A fan? Seriously? Surface level and short-term interventions rarely meet the needs of most menopausal employees.
Still, I’m glad progress is underway, and that the term menopause-friendly workplace is even being used. According to the healthcare consultancy firm Mercer, 15 percent of large employers in the United States say they offer or plan to offer some kind of menopause support in 2024, up from just 4 percent in 2022.
The need is growing, too. One in every five employees in the United States is at or close to the other side of menopause, showing up to work while potentially managing great strain on their bodies and brains. A 2023 Bank of America report, Break Through the Stigma: Menopause in the Workplace, found that more than half of the women surveyed said menopause had a negative impact on their work life. And there’s massive financial fallout, too: The Mayo Clinic calculated that symptoms like hot flashes, cognitive difficulties, and mood swings cost an estimated $1.8 billion in lost wages per year.
Moreover, menopause arrives just as many of us are catching our professional stride. Prime age of women in the U.S. workforce reached an all-time high in 2023. The average age at which women assume top roles in executive leadership? Fifty-four. Mind you, there is still paltry representation in the highest ranks of corporate America: Women hold a mere 10.4 percent of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies. Managing menopause in the workplace is only one of myriad inequities to overcome.
I have often reflected on my own working-through-menopause story—the times when my periods were so heavy that I had to max out on overnight maxi pads and still couldn’t sit at my desk for more than 30 minutes before having to dash to the restroom and change. The times I lost my temper, lost my train of thought, lost documents that I literally forgot to click “save” on. It never occurred to me that the experience would have been infinitely more manageable if workplace accommodations were the baseline. And not just a lifesaver for me but also for my colleagues and every single person who relied on me.
But the bigger problem is that most workplace policies barely skim the surface: In 2024, we still suffer from lack of science and investment in research. Shouldn’t we be able to show up at work—and in our lives—free from debilitating symptoms? Don’t we deserve to know more about documented racial disparities in the menopause experience? Why are we lacking clear and up-to-date guidance from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about the safest, most effective treatments—including menopausal hormone treatment—and why aren’t they universally covered by private health insurance and Medicaid?
I don’t want to see resources spent merely to help us fan away the hot flashes. I want us to be relieved of them altogether. Which is why I’ve spent the past year researching how to advance a government approach that serves and empowers women in menopause.
Now that the White House and leaders in Congress have announced initiatives to advance a federal medical research agenda focused on women in midlife, including menopause—a huge breakthrough!—the most impactful move the private sector can make is for CEOs to leverage their influence. This includes advocating for the newly introduced Menopause Research and Equity Act (which would mandate that the NIH evaluate the results and status of current menopause research and recommend new, needed studies) and other new federal legislation like the We’re Addressing the Realities of Menopause (WARM) Act.
As companies look to implement changes within, these are the kinds of robust and meaningful policies we should demand:
Access to menopause-specific healthcare professionals and medical benefits, i.e. offering and underwriting memberships to digital resources and telehealth menopause specialists and ensuring inclusion of menopausal hormone therapy and other prescription options by health insurance and flexible spending account allowances. Other essential related menopause coverage includes preventive care and treatments for bone and heart health, as well as a full range of mental health services.
Abundant educational resources for all employees about the mechanics of menopause and a separate, more granular “what to expect” set for those who are directly impacted. Extra credit for targeted materials that address the demands of particular professions: What matters to retail workers might look different for round-the-clock direct-service providers, or for women who sit at a desk versus ones who stand in front of a classroom.
Ample opportunities for open-door discussion. Companies should provide expert support via a dedicated staff advocate, human resources professional, and/or health consultant. At a minimum, they should cultivate an overall environment that fosters open, respectful discourse while maintaining personal privacy.
Accommodations that underscore accessibility. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it is that the ways we work can be far more elastic and inclusive—something that disability advocates have asserted for years. For menopause, the recommendations are simple and concrete: provision of paid health-first (not just “sick”) days and consideration of the physical conditions and cadence of the workday (tweaked as needed for things like temperature controls, dress codes, and timing and frequency of bathroom, meal, and beverage breaks).
Assurance of anti-discrimination and intergenerational engagement. From the top down and the bottom up, hiring and retention policies must address potential bias with regard to sex, pregnancy, age and/or disability. With four full generations in the workforce right now, it is imperative to confront casual age bias and the knowledge gap across gender. Connectivity goes beyond cartoonish rivalries: Boomers, Gen X, and millennials can bridge a meaningful divide and bring along the new wave of Gen Z entrants.
Collectively, the sooner employers take these tenets seriously and weave them into their company ethos, the sooner “the rest of us can get busy reimagining and reshaping society around that knowledge,” as Sharon Malone, MD, and I wrote for Oprah Daily last month. It is the path to a more equitable future, and the clock is ticking.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law. She is the author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity and the forthcoming Period. Full Stop. The Politics of Menopause (NYU Press, 2025).
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