Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Former Twitter execs endure a congressional hearing, we take a closer look at the term "work wife," and guest writer Alexa Mikhail shares her reporting on aging women at work. Have a peaceful Thursday!
- Crisis of confidence. My aunt recently opened up to me about the host of menopause symptoms that took her by complete surprise a few years ago. Amid the memory lapses and hot flashes, she feared her reputation at work would suffer if she acknowledged her ailments or took time off, especially in a male-dominated workplace. So she trudged along, never wanting to draw attention to herself.
My recent work as one of Fortune's health and wellness reporters confirms that my aunt is far from alone in her experience.
Again and again, I've heard stories from women who reach the pinnacle of their careers, only to have symptoms of discomfort barge through the doors unannounced—hot flashes, brain fog, night sweats, and anxiety, to name a few.
One of the most compelling accounts was from Pamela Hutchinson OBE, Bloomberg’s head of diversity and inclusion, whom I met at an event for C-suite women in New York; they'd gathered to discuss their experiences with menopause at work.
Outwardly, Hutchinson seemed to have it all together. She was stellar at her job and had a knack for ad-libbing on stage. Yet she captured the room’s attention by admitting she was battling to maintain her professional confidence amid the onslaught of symptoms.
“I wasn’t firing on all cylinders at all,” she told me. “There were times I just didn’t feel like I was showing up well.”
She said she cried before publishing a LinkedIn post in August 2021 about how menopause impacted her self-worth at work. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” the post begins.
Hutchinson’s post went viral, launching a global conversation around the support women deserve in the workplace. Managing menopause at work is a health issue, a diversity and inclusion issue, and at its core, a business issue, she wrote in her post.
“It’s an issue that has the potential to impact women’s performance in the workplace, and consequently, the performance of the business,” she shares in her post.
Yet when I attended the National Press Foundation’s Reporting on Aging fellowship in Washington, D.C., this fall, I learned about how workplaces have overtly failed to support older female employees. Many women lack the education, support, and community resources to navigate aging in a youth-obsessed society, sending them—like Hutchinson—into a crisis of confidence.
A 2022 survey from Elektra Health, a health care company focused on providing menopause education and care through community support and expert coaching, found that 18% of working menopausal women have not gone for a promotion due to their symptoms, and 20% say they have left or considered leaving a job because of menopause.
Despite the problem's wide reach, speaking about menopause at work feels forbidden. As I wrote in my piece on women aging in the workplace—which pulls together my months of reporting—the stigma stems from our cultural obsession with anti-aging, which sends a message that the most desirable way to age is to not look like you’re aging at all.
So where do we go from here? We continue the conversation and normalize aging because women deserve better. We need to get to a place where menopause and aging aren’t inherently fraught. And businesses need to offer age-inclusive benefits that mirror other more widely-instituted health benefits to show older employees that they matter so people like my aunt—and one day me—can stop conflating getting older in the workplace with losing relevance.
Read my full story here.
Alexa Mikhail
alexa.mikhail@fortune.com
@MikhailAlexa
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