Proposals to change British legislation to protect the rights of women experiencing menopause have been dismissed due to fears such a move would discriminate against men.
While women’s health has undergone a generational culture shift in recent years, prompting more open discourse around historically stigmatised concerns regarding our wombs, tales of dismissal by both male and female physicians remain rife.
This issue is known as the gender health gap, whereby women are taken less seriously by medical experts, particularly in the field of female-specific illnesses like endometriosis, perimenopause, and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
Continually finding it much harder than men to have our bodies understood, women have been conditioned time and time again to believe that pain and discomfort are normal, with receiving a diagnosis – let alone adequate treatment – an all but impossible feat.
Unfortunately, with the exception of countries like Spain where lawmakers have guaranteed that female employees feel as though their reproductive health is respected within a professional setting, this translates rather poorly in the workplace.
In the UK, the latest example of this is the government’s decision to deny calls for ‘menopause leave’ due to fears that such a move would ‘discriminate against men.’
It also dismissed a recommendation to make menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, which would make it illegal to discriminate against like age, disability, and race, among others.
In its official response, the government cited ‘unintended consequences which may inadvertently create new forms of discrimination, for example, discrimination risks towards men suffering from long-term medical conditions,’ as its reason for rejecting the proposals outright.
Instead, it claims to be focusing on encouraging employers to implement workplace menopause policies, adding ‘we are concerned specific leave may be counterproductive to achieving this goal.’
According to the BBC, the initial suggestions came from the Women and Equalities Committee, which accused ministers of making ‘glacial progress’ on menopause support.