The Motherload: Is Work Working for Women?

I've been thinking a lot about menopause lately. And not just because I'm going through it, but because of what seems to happen to women around this age in the workplace.

It seems I spent my twenties being asked, directly or indirectly, whether I was planning to have children, then my thirties trying to juggle both.

And, just as my children became more independent and I'd accumulated decades of experience, menopause arrived and suddenly I'm dealing with a whole new set of challenges I didn't see coming because, frankly, nobody warned us. It just wasn't talked about.

It got me wondering whether this is why, historically, nobody talked about menopause.

Perhaps it wasn't simply because it was considered in some way private.

Or maybe it was because acknowledging it would force us to confront some uncomfortable truths about the way we've structured work and careers.

I mean, women have always worked in one form or another. We've worked in homes, on farms, in family businesses, factories and communities for centuries. What changed was that paid employment outside the home became an expected contribution on top of childrearing and domestic responsibilities, and for all our feminist fore-sisters, I'm not sure they really thought that one through.

Today, many women are primary breadwinners. We have mortgages, careers, businesses and financial responsibilities that previous generations of women often didn't carry alone. Financial independence is, in many ways, one of the greatest achievements of modern society.

Yet despite all this progress, there still seems to be a peculiar tension around women and work.

A young woman may find herself viewed as a potential maternity leave risk. A mother may be viewed as distracted by family commitments. An older woman may quietly worry that menopause symptoms will be mistaken for incompetence, stress or ageing.

At every stage of life, there appears to be another hurdle to clear.

Of course, men face their own pressures and challenges, but women's working lives often intersect with biological realities that are rarely discussed openly. Periods, fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, breastfeeding, perimenopause and menopause are all part of life for millions of women, yet they remain largely absent from conversations about work and careers.

Yet many women still feel pressure to manage them quietly and invisibly.

I recently came across an argument suggesting that if we want to improve women's career prospects, perhaps we should stop talking about menopause altogether. The logic was that drawing attention to it may reinforce stereotypes and encourage employers to view middle-aged women as less capable.

I understand the concern. But I also wonder whether silence has ever really helped women.

We spent decades not talking openly about periods. That didn't eliminate the challenges. We spent years pretending motherhood had no impact on careers. It didn't stop the motherhood penalty from existing.

Ignoring reality rarely makes reality disappear. At the same time, I sometimes find myself asking a bigger question. Have we built a world that asks too much of everyone?

For decades, success has been defined through a fairly narrow lens. We were told to study hard, build a career, buy a house, climb the ladder, work longer, earn more and eventually retire. The pace has become relentless.

Many households now require two incomes simply to maintain the standard of living that one income once provided, leaving parents with less time for their children, communities feeling less connected and many of us permanently exhausted. It's difficult not to wonder whether we've confused economic productivity with human flourishing.

That doesn't mean women belong back in the kitchen, nor does it mean we should romanticise a past that often-offered women little financial independence or choice.

Many women who stayed home did so because they had no other option. But perhaps the conversation isn't really about whether women should work.

Maybe it's about whether all of us are working in ways that make sense for human beings.

The rise of female entrepreneurship may offer an interesting clue.

Women are launching businesses at extraordinary rates. While some do so out of passion or ambition, others appear motivated by something else entirely: flexibility.

A business can often be built around school hours, ageing parents, health challenges or personal priorities in ways that traditional employment cannot.

For some women, entrepreneurship provides freedom.

For others, it may be a response to systems that were never designed with women's lives in mind.

When employers struggle to accommodate the realities of caregiving, fertility treatment, menopause or flexible work, women often create their own alternatives.

The question is whether that's empowerment, necessity or a combination of both.

I suspect it's a little of everything.

What seems clear is that women continue to navigate a series of workplace expectations that shift throughout their lives. At twenty-five, they're asked whether they plan to have children. At forty-five, they may be navigating perimenopause. At fifty-five, they may be caring for elderly parents while still working full time.

Meanwhile, they are expected to perform as though none of these realities exist. Perhaps the answer isn't simply to keep talking about menopause, but to start having a more honest conversation about work itself, not just for women, but for everyone.

Because if so many people feel stretched, exhausted and disconnected despite being more productive than ever, perhaps the issue isn't individual resilience at all. Perhaps it's the system we've been taught to accept without question.

And that may be the real conversation we've been avoiding all along.