Managing the Menopause through ‘Abjection Work’: When Boobs Can Become Embarrassingly Useful, Again

Abstract

This article examines how power and menopause relate at work. Based on qualitative data from 23 women administrative workers, the research finds that menopausal symptoms are sometimes ‘awful’, ‘knackering’ and ‘isolating’. Yet, as ‘real’ or ‘normal women’, they described getting lost in the menopause discourse and many spoke of going through ‘the change’ instead; this saw them make sense of, and respond to, their symptoms in (sometimes) unconventional ways. In addition, when a menopausal body runs rampant, its abject appearance can cause embarrassment, but not just for the woman – for anyone who witnesses it. For some women, they simply go and stand outside. For others, the realisation of the vicarious nature of embarrassment sees them employ their menopausal bodies and do ‘abjection work’. This work acts as a powerful form of management; yet some might argue that it is improper.

Menopausal symptoms and work: A narrative review of women's experiences in casual, informal, or precarious jobs

“…Recent UK studies [ 1 – 5 ] and reviews of the global literature [ 6 – 8 ] have tended to regard employment and work as synonymous with one another. Across the world, however, many menopausal women 1 are not formally employed but nevertheless undertake ‘informal’, ‘sessional’, ‘precarious’ or ‘casual’ work, and in the so-called ‘grey’ economy, beyond the scope of taxation and employment protections [ 10 ].…”

“…For many women, the menopause is a time when the pressure of these competing duties intensifies. A lingering social archetype of the menopausal woman as a calm, wise and dependable carer [ 9 , 17 ] often combines with the intersectionally gendered ageism that undermines the credibility and self-confidence of menopausal women at work [ 4 , 5 , 8 ]. Menopausal women are often expected to set aside their own career aspirations and financial wellbeing to care for adult children, grandchildren, for elderly parents or grandparents or for other sick or disabled relatives and friends [ 7 , 8 ], and even though they may still have their own children at home and may be dealing with their own health challenges [ 1 , 8 ].…”

The Menopause Taboo at Work: Examining Women’s Embodied Experiences of Menopause in the UK Police Service

“…Discursive practices exacerbate this as Gullette (2004), for example, argues that cultural discourses construct female ageing as a life-course decline narrative such that women are aged by culture more profoundly than by biology. Menopausal women in particular are seen as 'suffering, hormonal, emotional, and asexual' (Putnam and Bochantin, 2009: 60) and can elicit concern and even disgust (Butler, 2019). From a feminist perspective, however, writers have begun to challenge existing discourse, arguing that menopause could be a positive, or at least acceptable and natural, event in a woman's life (Dillaway, 2005;Hvas and Gannik, 2008;Hyde et al, 2010).…”

Managing menopause at work: The contradictory nature of identity talk

“…Furthermore, these empirical studies found a sense of resolution in identity constructs of their participants: successfully protecting new found identities (Down & Reveley, 2009) and effect a solution to threatened identities (Clarke et al, 2009). Furthermore, Butler's (2019) participants discussed menopause symptoms at work through abjection of self, “abjection work,” negative identity talk as a way of coping with menopause at work: using their “inconvenient bodies” as a form of power at work, which was conducted by making others (mainly male colleagues) uncomfortable. While these findings consider a negotiation of self or selves and their “fit” within their organizational fields, they do not address gender or age, or indeed the transitional nature of gendered ageing and they do not consider an outcome in which a cognitive dissonance around competing identity is unreconciled.…”

“…We are to challenge popular social discourses associated with an "undesirability of ageing" and find personal relevance in individual discourses of bodily ageing (Coupland, 2007), where discourse is the mechanism for identity narrative (Beech & Sims, 2007). However, due to a paucity of empirical studies on negative identity talk, there are few examples of when, where, and why individual workers actively engage in selfdeprecating identity talk (Butler, 2019;Ybema et al, 2009). Self-other identity talk tends to emphasize the distinctive or the favorable, as such few studies demonstrate individual and situational circumstances where organizational agents engage in "indecisive, insecure, critical or self-deprecating" identity talk (Caza, Vough, & Puranik, 2018;Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).…”