is my boss being too open about menopause?

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I (a woman in my early 30s) work in a traditionally male environment, although there are a decent amount of women working there too. Recently my work has started focusing more on menopause support/awareness — there’s a menopause support group, “recognizing signs and symptoms” posters in the women’s toilets, etc. I think that’s great.

My manager has been making comments about menopause that really, really bother me. Things like, “Well, I better write that down because as a woman of a certain age, if I don’t I’ll forget it” or “I must have forgotten to do that — it comes with the menopause,” and so on. She makes these comments in meetings with men and women present, and just in public around the office.

I feel like she’s basically saying that she’s less able to do her job because she’s a woman. It gives license to men who hear it to make similar comments/assumptions about other women of her age group (who won’t all be experiencing the same issues she is), and I feel like I have to work harder to prove myself, too. I think that sort of comment should stay in the support group, and not be brought up so publicly. If it’s impacting her work, she might need to talk to her manager about it, but there’s no need to make the comments in meetings when she could just write whatever it is down and say nothing. Younger women in my workplace don’t blame their issues on their periods, they deal with it and move on.

I’m not asking if I should say anything to her about this, I have absolutely no intention of doing so. I’m just wondering if I’m off the mark? I’ve obviously not experienced menopause, but I can imagine that it’s frustrating to suddenly struggle with something that you used to be fine with, and wanting to explain why. I wouldn’t normally think someone needed to keep a health issue secret at work unless they wanted to, but it’s the broadness of what she’s saying — “all menopausal women/women my age” — that bothers me so much.

But then at the same time, I have male colleagues who’ve made similar “all men of my age” comments about being forgetful, and it’s not bothered me at all or made me look at other men as less able to do their jobs. So is it really fair of me to be holding her to a different standard because she’s a woman?

You’re more bothered by your boss’s comments than by the men’s comments because hers come against a backdrop of women already being discriminated against at work and having to work harder to be taken seriously, as well as a long history of women being dismissed as overly controlled by their bodies. That changes the way it lands.

It’s also true that age discrimination is a thing, and your male coworkers’ comments about themselves are landing against that backdrop … but I suspect that isn’t hitting you in the same way because, as a group, men have some built-in societal protections that women lack.

It’s also true that people should be able to talk about what they’re experiencing, and in theory it’s a good thing for people to feel comfortable talking about challenges associated with health or aging or all sorts of other things. But realistically, we aren’t there yet; there is still stigma and bias associated with lots of health conditions (from ADHD to mental health and on and on) that often makes it safer not to share them at work. And it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re in a cultural moment where that’s about to get better.

Part of the problem, too, is that your boss is talking about her experience with menopause as a universal experience for all women of a certain age. It’s like if you were both parenting young children and she kept writing off her forgetfulness as “I must have forgotten to do that — it comes with being a mom.” You’d rightly not appreciate how that reflected on fellow moms, who already face bias in the work world.

So, no, I don’t think you’re off the mark in feeling uncomfortable with your boss’s comments. But I also think that’s very much about the culture we live in: it’s not that she’s doing something inherently wrong; it’s that we live in a sexist culture where women have to worry about this.

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