One-third of women who have suffered symptoms of menopause say they hid them at work, and many think there remains a stigma around talking about the subject, a survey of workers in five countries showed.
More than 5,000 women in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and South Africa were interviewed about their experiences of menopause and work in research for the mobile phone provider Vodafone.
In all of the countries except Italy, about one-third said they had hidden symptoms, while in Spain more than half felt a stigma around the subject in the workplace.
South African women seemed most comfortable discussing the subject with colleagues, with 37 percent saying they thought there was a stigma, while in Italy the proportion who said they had hidden symptoms was lowest at 28 percent.
The survey found those who experienced symptoms before they were 45 were most likely to say that they were too embarrassed to ask for support in the workplace.
Of those in the UK, 63 percent of adults under the age of 44 said they had shied away from asking for help, while across all ages the figure was 43 percent. The figures were similar in the four other countries.
In the past few years, businesses have begun to introduce policies to help women who are suffering from menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes, anxiety and fatigue.
Channel 4 made headlines when it announced a range of measures to support staff, including flexible working arrangements and a private, cool and quiet workspace they could use when needed.
However, there are concerns that many women are still leaving the workforce because they struggle with some of the effects, and feel they are not supported by their employers.
Vodafone said it believed about 15,000 of its 100,000 employees would be currently experiencing the menopause, and that it was making a “global commitment” to support them.
The company is to roll out a training and awareness program to all employees, and all have been invited to a Webinar on “hormonal health and life stages” on Thursday.
Meanwhile, there are still almost 40 countries where women can be fired from their jobs simply for getting pregnant, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart said in a discussion on how the COVID-19 pandemic is making it even harder for women to escape poverty.
Speaking on Bloomberg TV in a conversation with Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, director of strategy and policy at the IMF, Reinhart said the economic fallout from COVID-19 had been “very regressive,” hitting the most vulnerable hardest, including women and girls.
“We are seeing big setbacks on schooling, girls are taken out that will not return,” Reinhart said on International Women’s Day.
She cited a report late last year that said extreme poverty was expected to rise for the first time in more than two decades, with a disproportionately high share of women among the world’s new poor.
The pandemic has contributed to an increase in violence against women and is reinforcing gender inequality in many countries, with women on average having about three-quarters of the legal rights of men, the World Bank said.
While laws have improved in some countries, women in many nations still face legal limits on economic opportunities, including restrictions on travel without a male guardian, the lender said.
Pazarbasioglu said it was very important to have “a women’s lens in policies.”
“That’s what we are pushing in our surveillance, in our lending, in our analytical work and in our capacity development,” she said.
“Making sure that in our budgets, that it’s gender friendly, that the informal sector which is housing many of the women employees, the policies are targeted at these important activities that women carry the largest burden in,” she said.
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