Menopause costs American women an estimated $1.8 billion in lost work time each year, according to a Mayo Clinic study published this week. The paper explored how hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings and the myriad of other symptoms associated with this time of life affect women in the workplace. It is the largest study of its kind conducted in the United States.
Researchers surveyed more than 4,000 participants at four Mayo Clinic sites in Minnesota, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin. About 15 percent said they missed work or cut hours because of their menopausal symptoms, which the study classified as “adverse work outcomes.” Those who reported the worst symptoms were 16 times more likely to report such outcomes than those with the least severe symptoms. Just over 1 percent said their symptoms had become so debilitating that they quit their jobs or were fired in the previous six months.
“We took that data and extrapolated it based on the U.S. labor force, and that’s how we came up with the estimated annual loss,” says Dr. Juliana Kling, a co-author of the study and chair of the Women’s Health Internal Medicine division at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. According to US Census data, there are more than 15 million women ages 45 to 60 in the workplace.
Although the majority of the survey participants were white, the researchers found that menopause may have a greater effect on black and Hispanic working women, said Dr. Blade. “Black women had more menopausal symptoms,” she said. “And higher percentages of black women and Hispanic women reported adverse work outcomes related to menopausal symptoms compared to white women.”
Several others studies have come to conclusions similar to those of the Mayo Clinic study. A smaller survey by the business health insurer Root Fertility found that about 20 percent of women took time off from work because of menopause. Researchers at the University of Southampton in England analyzed data from a longitudinal study of more than 3,000 women and found that those who reported at least one disruptive menopausal symptom by age 50 were 43 percent more likely to have left their jobs by age 55.
The findings underline the physical, economic and social challenges women face as they age, sometimes undergoing debilitating physical changes as they navigate the discomfort of discussing menopause with younger or male colleagues, said Dr. Ekta Kapoor, a study co-author and an endocrinologist. at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. “The topic of menopause is taboo in general, but even more so in the workplace,” she said. “I’ve heard from women that they don’t want to come across as a ‘complainer’ at work or they’ll start menopause and people will roll their eyes.” This, Dr. Kapoor added, can exacerbate the psychological challenges.
The economic loss calculated by the Mayo Clinic study is likely an underestimate, said Dr. Kapoor, because the women surveyed have access to health insurance and possible treatments for their symptoms, which is not the case for many Americans.
The findings “confirm what patients are telling me,” said Dr. Makeba Williams, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. (Dr. Williams was not involved in the study.) One of her patients, for example, is a college professor who suffered so much from the brain fog she experienced during the transition to menopause that she decided to stop teaching advanced courses. level, Dr. Williams said. “Her symptoms had gotten so bad that she couldn’t find the next word during class. That story can come in many different versions. Women see in their daily lives that their productivity is affected.”
But most Americans don’t have the option to choose to work less as some of the women in the study did, said Dr. Williams. “A lot of women don’t have the privilege of saying I’m just not going to teach this course — because if you don’t show up, you might not have a job, and that has economic and personal financial implications as well.”
Two years ago, when Grace Ward was a 44-year-old supervisor at a local library in Kalamazoo, Michigan, she began experiencing intense migraines for the first time in her life—a symptom, she later realized, of perimenopause, the transition to menopause.
“Two to three days a month I had to keep my head down. The sensitivity to light was just off-putting,” she said. She also experienced “wild” mood swings and hot flashes that kept her up at night and she started menstruating twice a month – all of which left her “obviously tired”.
Ms Ward used her sick days to take time off from work and eventually “my managers started to question if I could still handle it”. Then she decided to resign.
“I thought it would be better to leave than get fired,” she said. “It is appalling that we – as women – have to go through this craziness. I often feel sorry for us.”