Nursery World - Health: Managing menopause

What impact can the menopause have on women experiencing it, and how can early years settings ensure their staff are sufficiently supported? Caroline Vollans reports

Women should be offered flexibility and support from their employers during the menopause

It goes without saying that the early years is a female-dominated workforce, so thousands of practitioners will be trying to manage their menopausal symptoms every day at work. Menopause is not an out-of-hours experience. However, it remains a taboo subject. Terminology does not yet trip off the tongue and it is rare to find it on the workplace agenda.

Menopause is an ordinary process in women’s lives, not an illness. Should it not be the norm, then, that support is readily available for this given aspect of health and wellbeing?

THE BASICS

Menopause is often used as a generic term referring to the perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause. More specifically, perimenopause is the period leading up to the menopause when symptoms begin to appear. Menopause is, in fact, just one day: the day when a year has passed since having a period. Post-menopause is the time that follows this. The average length of time for symptoms to go on is four years, but many women have some symptoms for more than ten years.

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