Being an older woman is not viewed as a positive thing in our society The same survey estimated that 900,000 women had so far left their jobs, due to menopausal symptoms. A 2019 survey from Bupa and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that 59% of working women aged 45 to 55 who were experiencing the menopause reported that it had a negative impact on them at work, with the most common issues including a reduced ability to concentrate, and feeling more stressed and less patient with clients and colleagues. “I’m not convinced that women would disclose,” she says. “It’s really difficult to collect data on how many women may be leaving the workplace due to the menopause,” says Dr Vanessa Beck, an expert in work and organisation at the University of Bristol, “because it’s not something people tend to talk about in exit interviews.” Even if women were asked about the menopause when leaving companies, Beck isn’t sure it would help. Mara’s story is an extreme example of the devastating impact the menopause can have on women’s jobs – and their mental and physical health. And that is the only reason I am alive today. And there was no way I wanted to survive. “I thought,” she says, “if I jump, I will survive. She peered over the side, then realised, to her dismay, that the bridge wasn’t high enough. She stood up and approached the bridge, feeling completely empty. And I was so ashamed to be so incompetent at my job.”
Work wasn’t ever going to stop doing what they were doing to me. “It wasn’t that I wanted to die,” she says. Instead, she spent a few hours assessing what she felt, then, were her options.
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She sat on a patch of grass and ignored the fact her phone was vibrating with texts from her concerned husband. The following day, she woke up and drove to a nearby motorway bridge. That weekend, she spent a sunny afternoon with her husband and son at a local fair. By the summer of 2019, Mara couldn’t cope any more. (In the autumn of 2019, a specialist explained that her symptoms were caused by the menopause, and provided her with a doctor’s note explaining this to her employers, but they continued to monitor her performance, as they’d done previously.)Įvery week, she had to attend a meeting with her supervisors, where they’d tell her that, once again, she had failed to meet the standard expected. At the time she didn’t realise her depression was linked to the menopause - all she knew was that she needed help. Mara told her supervisors she had depression and anxiety, and submitted a doctor’s note, but they put her on a first warning.
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