We Need to Start Talking About Menopause at Universities

It is more expensive for a company to hire and train someone new than to offer the flexibility that academicians need to pursue their careers.

Human talent is one of the most important resources of businesses, organizations, and universities. An essential segment of this talent is comprised of women. In Australia, 54.7% of middle and low-ranking teachers and professors are women; in Canada, it is 41%, in Europe 41.3%, and in the United States 49.7%. This number drops dramatically when leadership positions are considered. Only 33.9% of Australian professors are senior; in Canada, only 28% are senior teachers; in Europe, only 23.7% of women are Grade A. In the United States, 34.3% occupy high positions in educational institutions.

If there are so many women in the middle and low positions in academia, what is happening on their way to higher ranks? Why do so few arrive at the top? What is different in their professional careers compared to their male peers? The answer is a gap that continues to impact many women’s professional careers even in the second decade of the 21st century. Universities still cannot find a way to take advantage of female academicians’ potential because they have not efficiently integrated two critical transitions in women’s lives into academia’s work culture, namely, motherhood and menopause.

Women disappear from the workforce just when it is time for them to ascend to better job positions. They are busy starting a family or adjusting to the changes involved when a phase in their biological cycle advances. There is no social and work culture that gives them adequate support. Traditionally, it has been considered that any woman who aspires to have a family should choose between this purpose and her career. Today, we know that this imposed social custom puts professional women at a systematic disadvantage compared to their male counterparts. In the particular case of colleges and universities, it deprives these educational institutions of at least half of their producers and knowledge transmitters.

It’s not special treatment; it’s about retention of talent.

One of the biggest arguments against implementing more flexible policies for maternity and paternity leave is that they are regarded as privileges, as special treatment, a reward that benefits someone we think “didn’t earn it.” The first step to better retention of talent for those who combine work with a family’s care (especially women, since they are more tied to this role by gender stereotypes) stops seeing it as an unnecessary privilege. It starts viewing it as part of an operations budget. In terms of capital and resources protection of a company or organization, it costs more if a person with the skills, training, and job experience leaves the position.

“Extended maternity leave benefits can boost women’s productivity and return the investment over time.”

This means that a hiring process would have to be opened from scratch to fill the position, arrange interviews, hire a new person, train her, and hope that her experience is equal to that of the person who left the job to attend the necessities of maternity (or paternity). This process requires more time, work, and money than simply providing facilities that allow employees to fulfill their family responsibilities and professional ones.

A study led by Vera Troeger, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, found that universities with better maternity benefits were better qualified to retain female talent. Thanks to their policies, more women remained in those universities, eventually becoming experienced professors, improve their contributions, and receive better salaries and benefits. “Extended maternity benefits can boost women’s productivity and return the investment over time,” Troeger explained, adding that these measures involve the addition of a workforce that could increase productivity not only for companies and organizations but entire countries.

Academicians have talked about how extended maternity leave and the change-in-pace of integrating family and professional dimensions helped raise their academicians’ level. Such is the case of the personal experience of an anonymous researcher who recounted her experience to The Guardian. Yet, maternity leave policies and the instances that help women integrate their family and professional dimensions remain disparate. No consensus establishes a basis from which to discern the minimum, average, and maximum benefits. Some universities support their female academicians in this transition. Others remain within the legal limits of what they have to do when a member of the organization starts a family. However, we can already say that there is an ongoing conversation to normalize the search for a balance between motherhood and professional development. It is already an issue in collective thinking. We cannot say the same about the next major transition in every professional woman’s life: menopause.

The professional female exodus

When they reach their fifties, many professionals are already holding management positions; they are owners of companies, deans, and presidents of universities, that is, if they are men. According to the Times Higher Education, of the 200 best universities globally, only 14% are headed by women. That statistic results from a set of complex issues. Still, within this context, one of the main reasons why women do not commonly become deans or presidents of higher education institutions is, in the first place, due to that disruption in their careers when they start a family. This significantly reduces the population of women who can form a career trajectory that makes them eligible for a high-leadership position. Even those in that select group who could continue advancing in their careers have to face a second disruption that is little talked about, namely, menopause.

“It was a sharp difference from when I was pregnant — during that time, I didn’t think twice about confessing forgetfulness and fatigue. Men and women laughed knowingly and supportively at my anecdotes.”

The hormonal balance change, and therefore the physical abilities of women come before men. This is not to say that male academics between the ages of 45 and 55 do not have health-related challenges. Men in that age range have an increased risk of developing hypertension, cholesterol problems, coronary complications, diabetes, and prostate cancer. But in men’s case, these health issues are not as visible in the workplace and do not involve a significant change in workplace dynamics. The areas of opportunity that male academicians have when moving to the next age range are normalized because many go through the same problems. For example, from the point of view of the social majority in academia, it is much easier to understand the need for a senior professor to take a sabbatical or recovery time from ventricular surgery or cancer treatment, r
easons why it would seem prudent to reduce hours of work. We would see it reasonable that his performance might decrease within the framework of that reduced schedule.

But would we think the same of a woman whose problem is a hormonal imbalance? Menopause is usually accompanied by anxiety, reduced ability to concentrate, hot flashes, among other common symptoms of this stage. Menopause is as common a health condition as the ones mentioned above. However, these symptoms are often categorized as female hysteria (hormonal imbalance), lack of attention or interest (inability to concentrate), weak character, and failure to work on a team (anxiety).

This happens because we talk a lot about heart disease, hypertension, and cholesterol levels, but we do not speak about the menstrual cycle, let alone about menopause. The topic remains taboo that a good portion of people who write or participate in texts that talk about the effects of menopause on female academicians, its implications in the workspace, and the lack of universities’ tools to manage these have decided to remain anonymous.

Jeneva Patterson, a senior teacher at the Centre for Creative Leadership in Brussels, Belgium, is one of the few who dares to use her name when speaking on the subject in public niche forums for education specialists. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, she talks about her personal experience with menopause. “It was very different from when I was pregnant; during that time, I didn’t think twice about confessing to lack of concentration and fatigue. Men and women laughed and were sympathetic to my experiences.” Patterson explains that this difference led her not to reveal the reason for repeated late arrivals to meetings because she got distracted along the way, assigning two or even three events the same day and time, missing flights, and forgetting what a colleague told her just a few minutes before.

Patterson’s fear, shared by all the women she interviewed to write the article, comes from this difference that she defines in her text. It is not the same for professional women that they need a change of schedule and workload. After all, they will be mothers, that they need it because they are entering menopause. A study sponsored by the Institute of Work, Health and Organizations at the University of Nottingham found a high probability that a professional woman’s relationship with her team will become hostile if she reveals her menopause condition.

“In my own case, only two options are available: to accept the fact that I am treated like a parasite, hideaway in shame and grateful feel for being tolerated – or to take the financial penalty of early retirement. I will soon settle on one of them.”

In the workplaces with good working practices, it is normal to offer a structure that allows women, and in the best cases, men, to create a balance between work responsibilities and family life. Menopause, on the other hand, is not normalized. Workspaces still do not have awareness, support, and empathy that translate into policies to support professionals going through this biological process.

Universities are no exception. One female academician, who chose to remain anonymous, contributed to the public discourse on the subject with a text for the Times Higher Education. In the article, she shares her personal experience of how the lack of knowledge and understanding toward her menopausal condition led to conflicts between her, her work team, and her superiors. The academician details that one of the most common practices in organizations with women in the menopausal age range suggests changing their workload to part-time or “inviting” them to retire before completing the years required for a full pension. Both options have a strong impact on professional women’s financial future, a burden that their male peers do not share. “In my case, I have only two options: Accept the fact that I am treated like a parasite, hide, and feel grateful to be tolerated, or take the financial blow of premature retirement. Soon, I’ll have to settle for one of these.”

For this woman academician, this situation is as simple as it is severely harsh. A menopausal woman has special needs. As long as this is not recognized and carried to the same normalization that motherhood enjoys today, it will keep being an issue that women are ashamed of, generate bullying and corrupt work practices.

Creating workspaces that take advantage of the potential of women who live with menopause starts by talking openly about the issue. The more women bring the subject to the conversation, the more awareness will be created about women’s needs in this stage of life, and the sense of shame that characterizes them will lose force. Companies, organizations, and universities must be willing to make the necessary changes that allow women to remain in the workforce, which is also beneficial to their employers, who will not have to lose human capital investment when a woman with menopause leaves her post.

Rest spaces, flexible schedules, and an empathetic work culture open to learning are needed to offer a platform of work continuity for women who are experiencing menopause. In their role as producers of knowledge and learning spaces, universities have the enormous responsibility to offer equitability resources. With these changes, they can be the first to benefit from a workforce in which more than half of its members continue being present and bringing knowledge after the age of 50.

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0