50: Companies Are Getting Menopause Completely Wrong

The media says menopause is costing companies billions in lost productivity.  We dug into the research - and found the story is backwards. 

Jen has been researching menopause and leadership, and in this episode we unpack how the media's "business case" framing - positioning menopause as a profit problem - actually sets women up for judgment and failure at work. We get into what the research really shows (spoiler: it's far less conclusive than the headlines suggest), and make the case that the real culprit isn't menopause at all - it's productivity culture that punishes women exactly when they're wired to lead. 

You are going to find out why:

• The "business case" framing backfires: Positioning menopause as a cause of lost profit makes women feel judged as the problem, and that judgment itself drives the stress response that worsens symptoms.
• The research doesn't back up the billion-dollar headlines: A literature review Jen found couldn't establish a conclusive link between menopause symptoms and work outcomes.  The media's loss estimates are outrunning the actual science.
• Productivity culture is the real system at play: Corporate culture rewards visible, tangible output over strategic and creative thinking, right at the life stage when women are neurologically and biologically primed for exactly that kind of leadership.
• It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: Pressure and judgment raise cortisol, cortisol worsens symptoms and clouds higher-level thinking, and that "lost productivity" becomes the very evidence used to justify the original narrative.

Meet Your Hosts:
Sheri and Jen are twin sisters, modern medicine women, leadership coaches, limiting belief busters and co-founders of Midlife Women Rising.

Join us in Costa Rica, October 2026 for our Retreat: Soul-Aligned - Design Your Extraordinary Next Chapter! Click here for details.

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SHERI: Welcome. This is the Midlife Rising podcast. Menopause is becoming a hot topic in the media and in workplaces. And Jen has been doing some really fascinating research into this that is blowing my mind. It's Sherry, by the way. Today, you're going to find out how the media has been positioning the problem that companies are facing when it comes to menopause and how, based on Jen's research, they've got it backwards. In fact, the way that menopause is being positioned is even hindering women in menopause from thriving in the workplace. And we're going to talk about how it affects women in leadership specifically. So if you are in perimenopause or menopause and you're still working, you're going to want to hear this.

SHERI (intro): You're a woman over 40 who spent your life being the one who holds it all together. But now your body's changing and your soul is done pretending everything is fine. Welcome to Midlife Rising. We're your hosts, Sherry and Jen, twin sisters and modern medicine women. Here to help you rewire your stress response, balance your hormones, and reclaim your feminine power. Every episode is a rebellion against the rules you never agreed to and a return to yourself. Join us where midlife isn't a crisis, it's a catalyst.

SHERI: Okay, welcome back to the Midlife Rising podcast. I am super excited about the stuff that we have been talking about lately. So Jen has been doing so much research about menopause and how it hits women in the workplace, specifically how it hits leadership. And she's been coming up with such fascinating stuff. I'm really finding it really inspiring, Jen, to talk about, to really kind of bring some of these concepts to light. Cause I don't think this is being discussed enough. Lots of people are talking about menopause and symptoms. They're not really talking about how it hits the workplace and leadership specifically. I know I'm just I'm feeling so much new enthusiasm and motivation for doing this work.

JEN: And you're actually wrong there. Um, there is quite a lot of talk about menopause at work right now. And that is exactly what we're going to dig into today because there's a big problem with the way the media companies are positioning menopause and women at work or midlife women at work at the moment. Yeah. So let's get into it. So let me talk to why, let me start by just talking to what I'm seeing in the media at the moment. And that is this positioning of menopause. So there's let me start with this. The first thing that we have that I have seen is a massive explosion of menopause support out there. We know this, right? Like a friend was saying it to me the other day. She's like, oh yeah, everyone's got a book, everyone's got a program. There's like lots of doctors who are now focusing in on menopause. And this is wonderful because it means that women have support that they didn't have before. Right. And at the same time, in the academic literature, there is starting to be, I wouldn't call it an explosion yet, but this nascent body of literature that is looking at menopause and work. There is zero, still zero on menopause and leadership. And that's the direction that I'm going in with my research. But the menopause at work literature is becoming really interesting because what it found at the beginning was there is no support for women at work during menopause. Right. And the second thing that this literature found was that women are struggling at work. They're feeling hot flashes. There's women that are bringing fans to work and they're wearing black all the time in case they suddenly get a period that's too much to deal with. They're feeling brain fog. They're having these symptoms at work and they're dealing with it alone. And part of that is secrecy because they feel like they're going to be judged. And part of it was because it was a very taboo topic in workplaces. There still is a lot of shame around menopause.

SHERI: Oh, yeah. I feel like the women that I know, as I was — when I was in the corporate world, which is really up until about 2022 that I left my last gig. I mean, I still do consulting there. But what I'm seeing is the women who are of menopausal age or going through perimenopause — you can tell, now that I've gone through it, I'm looking back thinking, oh my gosh, that's why she was so irritable. I can see what was happening for my leaders at the time. And nobody talked about it. I mean, a few of them did, but most did not and still aren't.

JEN: Yeah. And that is what the research is finding as well, after interviewing and surveying multitudes of women that are at this phase. So in response, the media has taken on this positioning to make a business case for supporting menopause and women going through it at work. And the problem is when we make a business case for things, it is always positioned as a profit problem. Right. You've done it with sustainability — it's hurting your profit, so you need to do something about it. And what I'm seeing in the media right now is they have presented menopause as: women are leaving the workplace because of it, women are less productive because of it, because they're suffering through these symptoms, and we're losing work hours. So there's actually stats on this. Here's an example, just to drive it home. The Mayo Clinic had this big report that came out recently talking about how $1.8 billion in US dollars is lost every year in productivity due to menopause symptoms.

SHERI: Mm-hmm.

JEN: And then the Canadian Menopause Foundation talks about $3.3 billion in lost income for women leaving the workplace — that's income loss for the women who are actually leaving the workplace due to their symptoms. And in Canada, which is a much smaller market than the US, 237 million in lost productivity. So they're talking about it as lost productivity — billions of dollars being lost in productivity for companies because these women are having symptoms. Yeah, there's good and bad about this. It's created this paradox because these statistics and the advocacy have been spurring all this support in businesses. So in 2023, 4% of US companies reported that they had support for women in menopause. And that's up to 25% now. And they're doing it in a couple of different ways — insurance benefits will now cover hormone replacement therapy, and some companies are also offering accommodations: flexible work time when your symptoms are too bad to come in, or women can step back to a role with less pressure and still keep their jobs.

SHERI: And didn't the UK take this a thousand steps further and their government actually got involved? So every company has to have a policy for menopause in place? I'm not sure exactly of the wording, whether it's a policy or what exactly they have to have in place, but it's the entire country.

JEN: Yes. And I don't know if it's mandated yet, but it's recommended. I forget where it stands there, but they're definitely ahead of North America on this stuff. So there's some good things that have happened because of it. And this positioning — there's a huge problem with it. This positioning also sets up women for failure as they go through menopause.

SHERI: Right. Because it positions women as the problem. And it positions productivity as the problem, which is actually a contributor to the problem.

JEN: Yeah. And let's hold that thought for later. Let's first talk about how this is actually positioning or setting women up for failure. Because this is one of the things that, when it hit me, was such a big "aha" moment. Okay, so here's what it does: it makes women the problem. So women are causing these millions or billions of dollars in lost revenue.

SHERI: Yeah, and lost profit. So it's our fault. It positions us as the problem.

JEN: And that sets us up for judgment in the workplace. Because then anybody who reads that article could read it going, "oh my goodness, we have to support these women because they're causing this productivity loss." And at the same time, whether it's conscious or not, we'll have people looking at women like, "oh, I wonder if she's in menopause — she's causing us a profit problem."

SHERI: Yes. And every time a woman in the 50-year-old sort of age range misses a day of work because she's sick or working from home or whatever, it causes speculation. It's the same eye roll we got from the gym teacher when we wanted to sit out of gym because of menstrual cramps.

JEN: Exactly. So it has people wondering and judging. It creates this paradox in the workplace — what we're doing to try to be good is setting us up for failure.

SHERI: Well, and can I just add something on there, Jen? The woman who is in menopause who reads that article, conscious or not, some of her psyche is going to absorb "oh my gosh, my productivity." She already feels like her productivity is waning, even though it may not be. But she's gonna subconsciously work harder, which is then going to exacerbate her symptoms. Because that pressure isn't just stress — that's underlying, constant nervous system pressure.

JEN: Exactly. It's actually her nervous system going, "oh my God, I'm gonna lose my job, or I'm gonna be passed over for that promotion." And most women in their late 40s and early 50s are still kind of thinking they might be up for one more promotion before they retire.

SHERI: Sure, it's 15 years at least.

JEN: Yeah, you might still have 15 years in the workplace. So they don't want to be seen as irrelevant yet. And they certainly don't want to be seen as a profit problem, because that's not gonna help them get to the real leadership role that they want. And sure — that's not just our opinion. This is also research-backed, that women work harder to prove their value once they hit — I forget the percentage — work harder when they get to menopause because they need to prove their value. Of course, there are women out there who don't feel all of this, and there are many who do. So they work harder, their nervous system is dysregulated, they're in stress mode most of the time. And we know what that means — we've talked about this before on this podcast. The harder they work, the more dysregulated their nervous system is, and the higher their cortisol gets, which means they are contributing to their symptoms.

SHERI: It's contributing to their symptoms, but it also means they're less productive at work, because they're not seeing all the opportunities that are out there. You can't see that when your cortisol is too high — you're in fight or flight, or freeze. You've just moved into your limbic brain, which is not your higher-level thinking.

JEN: Exactly.

SHERI: (unknown, ~13:45) Yeah.

JEN: (~13:46) So it turns down the volume on higher brain thinking, which is all the creativity, the strategic thinking, which is what women leaders need to get promoted. Right. And so all of this is creating this massive, vicious cycle. And for the woman — she's dysregulated, in stress mode all day, gets home, feels like she didn't get enough done because this has made her even less productive than she thought she originally was. So she works after dinner. And then she can't sleep. And then she doesn't have enough sleep. So she feels brain-fogged the next day. So some of the lost productivity is real, and so much of it is because she feels judged. And that starts this spiral. Oh, and by the way, Cher — I was reading a study this morning that was a literature review. They compiled all the work that's been done on menopause in the workplace, looking specifically at whether menopause symptoms are related to work outcomes, and found the studies are actually inconclusive. They could not conclude that there is a link between menopause and work outcomes.

SHERI: Interesting.

JEN: Which means the media is wrong anyway. They're calculating these billion-dollar losses when actually the research hasn't even shown there's a link between menopause and work outcomes — which means it's all in our heads.

SHERI: Actually, that brings me to a question I was thinking about earlier, on one of the studies you cited about women leaving the workplace. In those studies, are they finding that women are leaving because of their symptoms — like they can't hack it anymore — or is it more because they just don't want to? Does it relate more to what we've talked about on this podcast around heightened intuition coming in when you hit menopause, and really feeling like "this doesn't feel aligned for me anymore, I want to do what feels meaningful, there's something else for me that I'm meant for"?

JEN: That is an excellent question. I know there's not a lot of research that gets into that nuance about why they're leaving. There is some — I can't remember if they got into the reasons why. Some of the qualitative research had women saying things like, "I'm done, I can't deal with this pressure anymore." But at the same time, I wonder how much of that is because they're ready for more purposeful work, and they've finally tapped into their intuition and their soul is saying, "I'm kind of done with this because I'm tired of the pressure, and I want something more meaningful anyway." So that would actually be a great research study — to ask women qualitatively, why are you leaving?

SHERI: Yeah. And the other question I have is: how many are actually being asked to leave? The number of women I've talked to — and this could be my own bias because my friends are all at this age — but I feel like there's a disproportionate number of women in their 50s being let go or laid off, however you want to frame that. No company is going to admit that's why, and it might not even be a conscious reason why they're letting that person go. But I wonder whether it comes into play. I don't know how you'd measure that in a study, but I wonder.

JEN: I don't know — I'll look into it. But ageism is still alive in the workplace, and there are studies showing it affects women more than men.

SHERI: Yep, absolutely. And I used to be a recruiter, and I'd watch them looking for age on people's resumes. They want to know how old this person is. And when they have a conscious or subconscious bias that women over 50 aren't going to be technologically inclined, aren't going to be as quick to learn — I've watched them say these things out loud. So I know that is still happening.

JEN: Yep, at least in a couple of companies. And they did it for younger women too, who are of childbearing age — same thing, they don't want to hire somebody in case she says she's pregnant three months into a new job. So yes, ageism is alive and well and we definitely feel judged because of it.

JEN: So where I wanted to go next, Cher, on this study I was talking about — menopause symptoms don't actually conclusively cause lower productivity, lost hours, or attrition. Some studies show that, others don't. So what I wanted to talk about next, Cher, is: then what is the problem?

SHERI: Okay — what do you think it is?

JEN: Productivity culture. It's productivity culture. It's our system that demands productivity instead of ideas, especially for women. And we'll get into women versus men in a bit, but our corporate culture in the Western world is produce, produce, produce. We're constantly in that masculine energy of "I'm not valuable if I don't produce."

SHERI: Which — I mean, production is a good thing in a capitalist world. We need to take action on our ideas, or nothing happens. If you have an inspired idea, the masculine energy, the production energy, is "I need to take action on this, or I can't manifest it, I can't bring it to life." So a certain amount of that is necessary.

JEN: And my argument has always been there is too much of that production energy in corporate — and in our psyche, not just corporate, because women and men who leave corporate and start their own businesses just do the same thing until they become aware of it. Like I did it this morning — I almost did an Instagram post on it. I was hiking, as you know I do every morning, and it's black raspberry season — tons of wild raspberries on the hike. And I didn't want to take two minutes to stop and pick some, because I thought, "I'm late, I've got to get back, shower, get to my desk." And then I thought — late for what? I own my own business, I work from home, I can start my day whenever I want. What am I late for? That was exactly what my brain was running: if I don't get to my desk by nine, I'm not gonna have a productive enough day, I won't have enough output. So instead of doing this thing that would be wildly nourishing —

SHERI: In so many ways.

JEN: — and it only took me two minutes, I just wanted a handful. I've been picking them for days. It's in my psyche — I couldn't even stop it when I became aware of it. Well, I did stop to pick the raspberries, but then felt like, "oh my gosh, I've got to rush now."

SHERI: When it's in your subconscious as a program — there's a belief that creates a program that keeps looping in your nervous system. And when it's stuck like that, there's no amount of reframing that gets rid of it. You have to actually dig in and uncover the belief, which is exactly what you do — we both do it through coaching. I do it through theta healing, talking directly to the subconscious.

JEN: So we should do some work on that at some point.

SHERI: Yes, we should.

JEN: Anyway, back to this — it differs for men and women. Whether this is real or perceived, I'd have to look into. I've had so many women tell me they look around and go, "yep, my male colleagues have no problem sitting in their office thinking about ideas and strategy, having a day where they don't actually have output." One of my friends — she's a director — said, "I know that until I resolve this, I'm never gonna get on the executive management team, because I can't stop this. I'm still doing my own reports. My colleague hasn't done reports in years, and I'm still doing them myself. I can't stop myself."

SHERI: You've mentioned that before on the podcast. It also makes me reflect on a company I used to work for — a think tank consulting business, run by men. I was acquired into this company, and they had this pretty cool office with a little room full of books and studies and comfy chairs, a place where they encouraged people to go think and read and get inspired. Do you know how many women were in there, every time I passed by? How many women were in there? It's so different.

JEN: So I want to tell a quick story too on what this can look like — tangible output. What does that mean? For some people it's how many emails they've written, or for my friend, how many reports she's put out. For me, I still feel it too, and I've got more work to do on this, I have to admit. Yesterday I spent some time on Google Scholar looking for studies on leadership in menopause specifically. And what typically happens with me and research is I start looking, and because there's so little out there, I'm reading through a lot of abstracts and not finding anything. So that's not productive — that's a waste of time.

SHERI: Yes, that was how it felt.

JEN: (Note: the original transcript's pronouns get garbled here — likely a transcription error rather than a genuine speaker change; attribution below is a best guess.) And when I do find a study, I put it into my spreadsheet where I document a quick summary — what they found, their conclusion, their method. So far in my leadership-and-menopause spreadsheet, I only have two studies. And that exercise I spent two hours on yesterday felt like a waste of time.

SHERI: Exactly that. So you don't have something in your spreadsheet documenting that you were productive. And yet those two hours you spent searching are very telling — that actually was very productive. Now you've got a whole bunch of research questions swimming around for what you want to research next. It's a dopamine hit when you get to put the entry into your spreadsheet.

JEN: It's a failure if I don't get it. So this — productivity culture is so deeply ingrained, and it's exactly that that's making women at work going through midlife feel so judged, feel all of this in such a tangible way. It's this system that demands constant visible output and doesn't give permission to women to shift into strategic or visionary work, when this is the point in our lives we're actually set up for leadership.

SHERI: Right — tying this back to the grandmother hypothesis, our brains are actually rewiring to become leaders. I mean, we already are leaders — leaders of our families, at work, wherever — but this is a new shift that's supposed to happen. And yet productivity culture is messing with our hormones, our nervous system, all the neurotransmitters. All of that shifts in menopause — it's not just estrogen, it's an entire full-body change and a rewiring of the brain that we're not capitalizing on. Talk about capitalism — women are moving into a space where they're actually set up to lead, if they feel good and are supported in a way that doesn't reward productivity.

JEN: So I was reading an article the other day — I think it was in Forbes — talking about attrition: women leaving the workplace because of menopause might be part of the reason there are fewer women breaking through the glass ceiling. Because women are leaving with menopause symptoms, there are fewer women at the age when they're primed to be at board or executive level. And something about it was bothering me, and now I know exactly what it is — they were insinuating that it's these women leaving that's causing fewer women breaking through the glass ceiling. What our conversation is pointing to is that women aren't breaking through — that might be part of it, of course — but it's because there's all this judgment against them, because we are set up for failure in so many ways now. To summarize: there's judgment against them, they're working harder to produce instead of being strategic and visionary — which is what we want leaders to do — and women feel like they don't have permission to do that. Women in midlife feel even less permission, because that looks like slacking off when they've got symptoms they can't control. And then they're positioned as, "well, she can't even control her own body, so how is she going to control herself as a leader?" There's so much working against them.

SHERI: There really is. And that reminds me — we have a colleague and friend who was talking about doing research on this. I have to follow up with her. She was really looking at why aren't there more women at the top. It wasn't because she didn't believe they're just not being chosen — that's probably part of it — but her theory was that there's a lot of women who don't want to be there because they don't have the support they need, or they perceive there's just too much pressure and they don't want to work like that.

JEN: Yeah. So what I think is happening is there are some women who just don't want the pressure, some who want something more meaningful, and some who are feeling menopause symptoms — and those women are leaving. There are other women who are staying, sticking it out, trying to be more productive and sort of suffering, saying "it's just gonna be crazy like this until I retire or leave this company." And then there's also a group of women who are tremendous leaders at this point in their lives — somebody posted on my LinkedIn this morning about how she looked at women at this age and saw fantastic leaders. Our sister is one of them, stepping into a leadership role as a powerful woman, and she doesn't feel a lot of this stuff.

SHERI: No — it makes me want to look at why. Who are the women who are actually thriving, sustaining or moving into leadership, and what are they doing differently? You and I work with our clients and see results, and we know what they're doing — but on a broader scale, I'd like to see what they're doing differently and what we might be missing.

JEN: Yeah, I'd love to do a piece of research on that. So there's like two studies that have come up just in this conversation for me to follow up on.

SHERI: So I think let's head towards closing this. One of the things I want to highlight is what this is costing companies. We know it's costing some women through rising cortisol, which leads to worse sleep, exhaustion, brain fog — cortisol makes symptoms worse. So it's hurting the women who are feeling this, costing them their health, their emotional and physical and maybe spiritual wellness.

JEN: And it is costing companies. The companies getting on this bandwagon — this narrative that menopause is causing lower productivity — they're going to continue to lose women, to judge women, to have fewer women at the top. It's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: they'll lose productivity because women feel even more compelled to prove they're not the problem, and they'll lose really strong leaders.

SHERI: And they will lose really strong leaders. So this whole thing drives a self-fulfilling prophecy — women leave the workforce, you won't get them at the top. So we have a choice here — or companies have a choice — to look at the system. Do we want to continue this narrative because we think it's helping women? Or do we want to find a different solution — to look at a system that keeps rewarding productivity and tangible output instead of innovation, creativity, strategic vision, thinking — and stop judging that as lazy.

JEN: I feel like this is a really big shift.

SHERI: Mm-hmm. I think it's a good place to end — to just put that question out there. I'd love to hear from our listeners what their thoughts are on this.

SHERI: Yes. And we want to invite them to come back for our next episode, where we're going to be talking more about — part of what you've been talking about, Jen, is really treating this as a woman's health issue. It's their fault, it's their bodies that's the problem here — and I think that's another piece of the system that needs shifting, treating menopause as a disease.

SHERI: All these things we feel are symptoms — it's like saying puberty is a disease because girls have menstrual cramps and mood swings. We don't call puberty a disease or a health issue. It's a transition.

JEN: Yeah. We don't call puberty a health issue, but we're calling menopause one. So we're gonna talk more about that next week. And just to leave our listeners with a vision — what happens when we shift these systemic beliefs, this systemic programming? How many women would move into leadership and thrive at it?

SHERI: Yeah, and not feel the pressure to work the crazy hours. I just imagine these workplaces with women at the top who are more allowing and accepting — time to think, time to be strategic, time to take off when you're having menstrual cramps, time to listen to your intuition.

JEN: Listening to intuition instead of logic all the time.

SHERI: Oh, it would just be a different world.

JEN: And we know this — this is research — that when women are at the top, companies are more profitable, they do better for the environment, and they have better cultures.

SHERI: Well, I think that's a good note to end on.

JEN: Yeah, the possibilities are endless.

SHERI: Okay, thank you so much for listening. And come back next week for another episode.