Managing menopause at work: The contradictory nature of identity talk

Abstract

This article explores how older women experience and manage menopause at work by asking how female workers construct their work identity around their experiences of menopause at work. Based on qualitative data from 21 women in Edinburgh, UK, findings suggest that women engaged in conflicting behaviors to manage and make sense of their menopausal bodies at work. On the one hand, women engaged in a highly resilient, neoliberal discourse around controlling and managing the symptoms at work. Conversely, data emerged reflecting a negative and self-deprecating identity talk in how women described themselves in relation to the menopause. This article responds to the call for more nuanced empirical work on factors affecting extending working lives and experiences of menopause at work. While research output generally acknowledges the need for organizations to better understand individuals’ needs at work and not to be blinded by anti-ageing discourses, this article recognizes that individual women themselves must also heed this advice to more effectively navigate the menopause through continued labor force participation. This article also concludes that menopause management at work must consider that individual women face their own unique cocktail of menopause symptoms, as such blanket human resources policies on their own might be inadequate to improve employment outcomes of women challenged and interrupted by the menopause.