Menopause symptoms lead to work difficulties for more than one-quarter of UK women
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Approximately 27% of women in the workplace experience difficulties at work caused by symptomatic menopause, according to a cross-sectional analysis of the Health and Employment After Fifty study.
“Despite the potential impact of menopause on women’s working lives, this research area had received scant attention until the last decade,” Stefania D’Angelo, MSc, from the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre at the University of Southampton, U.K., and colleagues wrote. “Since then, studies have shown that the self-reported work ability of women, as assessed using the Work Productivity Activity Impairment scale, is affected to the greatest extent amongst those women who report more severe menopausal symptoms, as compared with women without symptoms.”
This analysis, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, used data from women from the Health and Employment After Fifty community-based cohort study of individuals aged 50 to 64 years living in the U.K. This cross-sectional analysis included 409 women from this study who completed a questionnaire regarding their menopausal symptoms and the effect of such symptoms on their ability to cope at work.
The most common menopausal symptoms reported were vasomotor (91.7%), trouble sleeping (68.2%), psychological symptoms (63.6%) and urinary symptoms (49.1%). Symptom reporting prevalence was similar regardless of the type of occupation women were performing.
About 27% of women reported moderate to severe difficulties coping at work due to their menopausal symptoms. Researchers observed financial deprivation, poorer self-rated health, depression and adverse psychosocial occupational factors as risk factors for difficulties coping at work. However, physical demands were not a risk factor.
According to the researchers, these findings suggest that there are socioeconomic differences in the menopause experience since those reporting financial difficulties were more likely to also report difficulty coping at work due to their symptoms.
“Our findings also evidence the inequality that impacts working women’s menopause, suggesting that future workforce policy needs to be focused on supporting women who are doing the poorest paid jobs and have the greatest risk of poor health because of their deprived circumstances,” the researchers wrote.
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