I feel it’s quite unusual for a parliamentary committee to get the door slammed in its face by the government, but maybe I’m doing my sums in old money. Last summer, the women and equalities committee made a number of recommendations around menopause support. None of it sounded that major: no mandatory high-voltage air-conditioning units in public venues, no blanket rules on when to, and when not to, bother a menopausal woman with your nonsense, nothing like that. Just some basic workplace support from larger employers – specific menopause leave, more flexibility on sickness policy, a move to make the menopause a protected characteristic, so that there would be a statutory duty to make reasonable adjustments for it.
Ministers noped all the crunchy bits, agreeing “in principle” to the floppy, pointless bits – a menopause “ambassador”, a public awareness campaign. Imagine, if you can bear your own teeth-grinding, what that campaign would look like: babyish fonts on a pink background, some 27-year-old-comms-professional-devised slogan telling you it’s OK not to feel OK. It’s like some devilish trolling operation: these menopausal women say they’re so angry they could set fire to furniture using only their white-hot eyeballs. Let’s put that to the test.
