Managing menopause at work: The contradictory nature of identity talk

Abstract

This article explores how older women experience and manage menopause at work by asking how female workers construct their work identity around their experiences of menopause at work. Based on qualitative data from 21 women in Edinburgh, UK, findings suggest that women engaged in conflicting behaviors to manage and make sense of their menopausal bodies at work. On the one hand, women engaged in a highly resilient, neoliberal discourse around controlling and managing the symptoms at work. Conversely, data emerged reflecting a negative and self‐deprecating identity talk in how women described themselves in relation to the menopause. This article responds to the call for more nuanced empirical work on factors affecting extending working lives and experiences of menopause at work. While research output generally acknowledges the need for organizations to better understand individuals’ needs at work and not to be blinded by anti‐ageing discourses, this article recognizes that individual women themselves must also heed this advice to more effectively navigate the menopause through continued labor force participation. This article also concludes that menopause management at work must consider that individual women face their own unique cocktail of menopause symptoms, as such blanket human resources policies on their own might be inadequate to improve employment outcomes of women challenged and interrupted by the menopause.

Menopause and Sustainable Career Outcomes: A Science Mapping Approach

“…Notwithstanding the importance of this highly complex phenomenon in the workplace [4,9], given the dynamics related to it, there is a serious lack of research on the phenomenon of menopause at the workplace, let alone taking into account a sustainable career perspective [10,11]. Sustainable careers are defined as "sequences of career experiences reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, thereby crossing several spaces, characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual" [12] (p. 7).…”

“…Moreover, several interventions aimed at improving work ability and quality of life during menopause were performed (see for example [66,67]). Finally, the study of Steffan [9] described Figure 8 shows that the motor theme menopause covers topics such as health, postmenopausal women, symptoms, work, intervention, experiences, adults, quality of life, attitudes, and midlife. In the period of 1992 to 2002, in the majority of studies within the motor theme postmenopausal women, employment was often used either as an antecedent of risk factors or as a contextual variable to better understand narratives on menopausal experiences.…”

“…Moreover, several interventions aimed at improving work ability and quality of life during menopause were performed (see for example [ 66 , 67 ]). Finally, the study of Steffan [ 9 ] described how women dealt with menopausal symptoms at work. As regards the second motor theme, i.e., breast cancer , from 2014 to 2020, the topics of prevention , awareness , knowledge , nurses , risk factors , and exposure were covered (see Figure 9 ).…”

“…Regrettably, so far, a whole-life perspective [ 11 ] on the impact of menopause on women’s career sustainability is completely absent in the scientific literature. We argue that a whole-life perspective, wherein the work-nonwork interface in career development [ 31 ] (see also [ 72 , 73 ]) is incorporated, and wherein societal, organizational and psychological concerns related to this interface are dealt with, are needed to do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon [ 4 , 9 ]. Adopting such a whole-life perspective would also imply that stakeholders that are surrounding the individual career holder (i.e., their family, friends and peers, supervisor, colleagues and employer) are taken into account [ 11 ].…”

Do Menopausal Symptoms Affect the Relationship between Job Demands, Work Ability, and Exhaustion? Testing a Moderated Mediation Model in a Sample of Italian Administrative Employees

“…The biological and body changes involved in menopause have a deep impact at the psychological level; specifically, these changes may generate anxiety, depression, and stress and may also reduce self-efficacy and self-esteem [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. In this context, work may help women to build psychological resources useful to adapt themselves to the new biological condition of menopause, thus favoring the process of identity redefinition that this transition may entail [ 13 ]. Jobs may allow for the development of such resources by providing opportunities for women to achieve intrinsic and extrinsic development by engaging in meaningful projects and exercising control [ 14 , 15 ].…”