The Thing Nobody Talks About: Menopause, Your Career, and the Pressure to Hold It All Together

There are things we talk about when we talk about menopause.

Hot flushes. Night sweats. The end of periods. A vague sense that life is shifting.

And then there are the things we don't talk about. The ones that sit quietly underneath the surface, affecting millions of women every single day, but rarely making it into the conversation.

One of the biggest? Work.

Your career. Your performance. Your sense of capability and worth within a professional life you have spent years, maybe decades, building. The ever-increasing pressure to have it all, do it all, and show absolutely no sign of struggle while you're at it.

That's what I want to talk about today.

The numbers we need to sit with

Before we get into the experience of it, let's look at what the data is actually telling us — because it is striking.

Research suggests that approximately one in ten women in the UK leave the workforce entirely because of menopause symptoms. That's not a small number. That is a generation of experienced, skilled, knowledgeable women quietly exiting careers they should be thriving in.

And the women who stay? Many of them are struggling in ways that go largely unseen.

Studies show that two thirds of women with menopause symptoms report they negatively impact their work. Work performance, concentration, memory, confidence, and the willingness to put themselves forward for opportunities - all affected.

What makes this even harder to sit with is when this is happening. For many women, the menopause transition, which can begin in the mid-30s and last the best part of a decade, overlaps directly with what should be the most professionally powerful years of their lives. The years when women are stepping into leadership, taking on greater responsibility, and reaching the height of what they can offer. The timing could not be more difficult. Or more unfair.

The workplace wasn't designed with this in mind

Here is something I say a lot, and I will keep saying it until it changes: we were never prepared for this. Not by our doctors, not by our schools, not by the workplaces we entered. The average age of menopause is still quoted as around 51, which means that any woman experiencing symptoms in her late 30s or early 40s, and many are, is already operating outside the frame of what most organisations even think to look for.

The result? Women misread their own symptoms. They attribute brain fog to burnout. They put anxiety down to stress. They interpret loss of confidence as a sign that they are no longer good enough, rather than recognising it as a hormonal shift that has nothing to do with their capability.

And workplaces, in turn, miss it entirely. Not necessarily through lack of care but through lack of awareness.

Research consistently shows that fewer than 40% of women feel supported at work when it comes to menopause, and that only 26% have access to formal workplace policies or programmes designed to help. More than three quarters of women in one survey reported having no workplace accommodations for menopause at all.

This is not a personal failing. It is a systemic gap... and it is one we are only just beginning to close.

Something is changing... and it matters

Here is the good news. And it is genuinely good news, even if it comes with caveats.

The Employment Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in December 2025, represents the most significant shake-up of UK employment law in a generation. Among its many provisions, it introduces a statutory requirement for large employers, those with 250 or more employees, to develop and publish Menopause Action Plans as part of their Equality Action Plans.

From April 2026, this is voluntary. From spring 2027, it becomes mandatory.

What does an action plan need to include? While the detailed regulations are still being finalised, guidance published in March 2026 suggests plans will need to cover practical workplace accommodations, manager training on symptoms and support, assessment of how menopause affects the workforce, and access to relevant health resources.

Employers must select at least one action from the menopause category - though the government strongly encourages going further. And critically, these plans will be publicly visible to staff, to potential recruits, and to stakeholders. That changes the conversation significantly.

This is a step in the right direction. A meaningful, long-overdue one.

But here's where we need to be careful

Action plans are welcome. But a plan is only as good as its understanding of who it is trying to support.

And right now? The risk is that we design these plans around the average... a woman in her early 50s, experiencing the most commonly discussed symptoms, while leaving a significant proportion of women entirely uncounted.

Women experiencing early or premature menopause, which can occur in the 30s, and affects 1 in 100 women under 40, will not see themselves in a policy built around average statistics. Women in their late 30s and early 40s navigating perimenopause, often without any idea that is what is happening to them, will not be reached by a support structure designed for someone a decade older.

The youngest women in this transition are also, research suggests, some of the hardest hit. Women under 50 are more likely to report feeling helpless, less seen, and less supported in the workplace when navigating these symptoms. They are also at a stage in their careers where they are still establishing themselves, still proving their worth, still building the professional identity that menopause is quietly beginning to erode.

If our Menopause Action Plans are going to make a real difference, they need to account for this. Not just the average. Not just the expected. But the full, varied, often earlier reality of when this transition begins and how differently it unfolds for every woman.

The pressure nobody is talking about

There is something else underneath all of this that I think deserves to be named.

The pressure.

The toxic, relentless, largely self-imposed pressure that so many women carry into every single day of their working lives. To perform. To show up. To not let the cracks show. To be brilliant at our jobs, present for our families, and somehow also manage a hormonal transition that is affecting how we think, feel, sleep, and experience ourselves, all while pretending everything is fine.

I know this pressure. I lived it. I was navigating early menopause while still trying to function, still trying to show up, still trying to be the person everyone needed me to be. And the gap between what was happening inside me and what I was presenting to the world was exhausting in a way that is very hard to describe.

This is not just a policy problem. It is a cultural one.

Workplaces can have the most beautifully written Menopause Action Plan in the world, and it will mean very little if the culture within those walls still makes women feel that showing any sign of struggle is a risk to their career. If the unspoken message is still: keep it together, be resilient, push through, then the plan becomes a document rather than a lifeline.

What we actually need, alongside policy, is a genuine shift in how we talk about this. In boardrooms and team meetings and one-to-ones. Between managers and the people they manage. Between colleagues. Between women themselves, who are so often navigating this in silence, not knowing that the woman sitting across from them might be experiencing the exact same thing.

What good support actually looks like

So what does meaningful support look like, beyond a policy document?

It starts with awareness. Managers and HR teams understanding that menopause is not a 50-something concern, that symptoms can be cognitive and emotional as well as physical, and that a woman who seems to be struggling is not necessarily less capable; she may simply be unsupported.

It looks like flexibility. Not as a special favour, but as a structural norm. The ability to manage temperature, take breaks, work from home on difficult days, or adjust hours without having to explain or justify in detail.

It looks like access. Access to relevant health information, to coaching and support, to honest conversations that do not require a woman to risk her professional reputation in order to ask for help.

And it looks like culture change. Led from the top, embedded in how teams work, and built on the genuine belief that supporting women through this transition is not charity. It is good leadership, good business, and the right thing to do.

A note to the women reading this

If you are in your 30s or 40s and something at work feels harder than it should, if you are doubting yourself in ways you never used to, struggling to concentrate, or quietly withdrawing from opportunities you once would have pursued... please hear this:

You are not less capable than you were. You are not imagining it. And you are not alone.

This transition is real. It is happening earlier than most people realise. And it is affecting your working life in ways that are valid, documented, and with the right awareness and support it is entirely navigable.

The conversation is starting to change. The law is starting to catch up. But until every workplace and every woman has access to the awareness, language, and support they need, we will keep having this conversation.

Here's to brilliant women staying in the workforce, being supported within it, and never having to choose between their health and their career.

If this resonates with you, whether you are navigating this personally or thinking about how to better support the women in your organisation, I would love to hear from you. You can find out more about how I work at jorennie.com, or reach out to me to talk about where you are.