The Symptoms Your Employer Doesn’t Know How to Talk About and Why That Has to Change

Why is a high-performing woman in her forties having a hard time focusing? Why does she feel exhausted in meetings? Why is she second-guessing decisions she would have made without hesitation a year ago?

The answer might be perimenopause. And the silence around it is costing women their careers.

Workplaces should provide accomodation and support to women in perimenopause.

What Perimenopause Actually Does at Work

Research consistently shows that the cognitive and psychological symptoms of perimenopause are among the most disruptive and the least understood.

• 54% reported fatigue at work

• 44% poor concentration

• 40% poor memory

  
  

(PMC cohort study, 2023)

These are not personality changes. They are clinical symptoms of hormonal fluctuation and they are happening, invisibly, in boardrooms, operating theatres, classrooms, and offices across the continent.

The Career Toll

The professional consequences compound. Research from the CIPD found that over 1 in 4 women — an estimated 1.2 million in the UK alone — believe menopause has negatively affected their career progression. (CIPD, 2023) Eleven percent have turned down a promotion because of their symptoms.

Women are also taking significant time out of the workforce: on average, 32 weeks of leave over the course of their careers attributable to menopausal symptoms. (CIPD, 2023) And the impact is not evenly distributed: 38% of ethnic minority women reported negative career effects, compared with 25% of white women.

Perhaps most telling of all: 72% of women have hidden their symptoms at work at least once, fearing they would be judged as less capable or professional. (Catalyst, 2024) Women are managing a clinical health condition in silence, alone, because the workplace has given them no other option.

This Is a Structural Problem, Not a Personal One

As a perimenopause coach, I work with women who are brilliant at their jobs and who are quietly falling apart. In their workplace, no one around them knows what’s happening, or if they do notice, they don't know what to do to help.

Women internalise brain fog as incompetence. The exhaustion as weakness. The emotional volatility as evidence that they can’t handle pressure.

They can. The system just hasn’t been designed to support them.

EU-level policy must treat perimenopause as the occupational health issue it is: with mandatory employer obligations, trained managers, accessible healthcare pathways, and workplaces legally required to make reasonable adjustments. Until it does, we will keep losing exceptional women one quiet resignation at a time.

Sources

Fitzgerald et al. (2023). Impact of menopausal symptoms on work and careers: a cross-sectional study. Occupational Medicine, 73(6), 332–337.

CIPD Menopause and the Workplace (2023)

Brown et al., The Lancet 403:969 (2024)

EMAS Position Statement, Maturitas 151:55 (2021)

Catalyst — Menopause at Work (2024)

UK House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee (2022)