Why a menopause policy won't fix it
About this Episode
In this solo episode, Bree looks at perimenopause and menopause at work, and the conundrum many workplaces face: how to support people through this stage of life without feeding the stigma that can quietly limit their careers.
Bree starts with their own experience as a trans non-binary person navigating a space built around women, and how perimenopause and ADHD combine to affect capacity from one day to the next.
They then question the usual workplace response. Specific policies and dedicated leave sound good, but if taking that leave marks you as less capable, people won't use it. Bree makes the case for genuine flexibility, outcome-focused management and supportive first conversations instead.
Bree closes with practical ways to reduce stigma, from leaders role modelling to language that doesn't leave gender diverse people invisible.
What You'll Learn
Why a specific menopause policy can reinforce the stigma it's meant to address
Why offering leave isn't enough if people don't feel safe taking it
How perimenopause and ADHD interact, and what that means in practice
Why flexibility and outcome-focused management serve far more employees than a single-issue policy
Why the first conversation about a drop in performance should always be from a supportive lens
Why requiring medical evidence for adjustments starts from a base of no trust
How to use language that includes gender diverse people without erasing women
Resources Mentioned
Claire G. Coleman, author of Terra Nullius and Lies, Damned Lies
Menopause, Neurodivergence and Workplaces: Getting It Right, Nicola Knobel
Why menopause at work is important, Menopause Friendly Australia
Keep Learning & Connect With Bree
Want practical strategies for navigating resistance and building real momentum in your DEI work? Access my free webinar on evidence-based DEI strategies here. It’s packed with tools you can start using today.
If this episode sparked ideas or questions and you want to talk more about how I can support your team or organisation, book a free 20-minute call with me. I’d love to hear what you’re working on and explore how we can move the work forward together.
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Why a menopause policy won't fix it
DEI Will Not Die, with Bree Gorman: Full transcript
Welcome to DEI Will Not Die. It's a solo episode again today, and I want to start by acknowledging that I'm on Wadawurrung Country and pay my respects to Elders past and present.
Last week (well, last week from when I'm recording this, probably a couple of weeks before you hear this episode) I had the absolute privilege of being on a panel called Beyond the Noise. It was about how people with a strong sense of social justice, who are interested in inclusion, work in the current global environment, where there is resistance and backlash and a lot of noise that isn't necessarily helpful. That noise impedes the work and it impacts us personally as well.
It was one of the best panels I've been on, and one of the other panel members was Claire G. Coleman. I may have been living under a rock to not have come across Claire before, but I've since done a deep dive, and she's amazing. I'm reading one of her books at the moment, so I'd highly recommend you look her up if you haven't already. The book I'm reading is Terra Nullius, but I've been told Lies, Damned Lies is a must-read, so I'm looking forward to getting into that one next. Claire was absolutely incredible on the panel and gave such a great view on activism. She has a really beautiful approach to it. She's a trans First Nations person, and I'd really encourage you to find her, check her out and follow her. I might see if I can get her on this podcast at some point.
On Wadawurrung Country at the moment, spring has sprung. The weather swings between being beautiful one day and ridiculously windy and crazy the next. Hay fever sufferers, that's where I'm located and what's happening here at the moment.
I want to talk about perimenopause and menopause today. I want to talk about it firstly through a personal lens, because I have real lived experience of this at the moment, and also through a workplace lens. I want to hold what I think is a bit of a conundrum for many workplaces: the intent to create inclusion for people experiencing perimenopause or menopause, and at the same time not leaning into the stigma that can impact people's career opportunities. I'm probably being a bit vague there, but I'll talk about that more as we go on.
First, to put my experience and my lens over this topic, because I think it's always important to hear different people's experiences of something. For me it's been a longish journey at this point. For those who don't know, I'm 46. I probably entered perimenopause at about 41 or 42, and I've had quite significant symptoms, I would say. But I think that's relative, in terms of my general health and wellbeing and my expectations of myself at this stage of my life.
I started seeking medical support and treatment at around 43, and that was quite an interesting process, particularly because I'm trans non-binary. When you're seeking treatment for something that's considered to be a woman's thing, you're immediately navigating your own safety and psychological wellbeing in that space. At the same time, you're holding empathy and care for medical practitioners who have good intent and want to do well, but essentially the majority of people they see every day are women. So their language is very binary and very women-focused. I've also found it to be quite heteronormative, particularly if you present like me as a parent. The language has definitely been challenging throughout.
The assumptions and stereotypes that medical professionals lean into are always really interesting and fascinating to me. I've found medical practitioners act like there's this camaraderie between women, who all experience it, and men, who don't. Those conversations are very binary and lean strongly into stereotypes.
And think about the environments we're in when we go into these medical settings. There's one practice in Geelong where you walk in and the entire walls are painted in a pink flowery motif. It's really jarring. I think it's jarring for anybody except the people who desperately love pink flowers everywhere. It's hard to describe how obnoxious this environment feels. As somebody who leans towards a trans masc gender expression, it instantly had an isolating effect, and it made me feel quite unnerved and uncomfortable in that setting.
Interestingly, the workers in that particular clinic were actually quite inclusive. They had clearly done a lot of work. They asked pronouns up front and they actually used them, which was such a positive experience. So once you got past the aesthetics of the space, it was actually quite an inclusive practice, which was great.
Overall, I've had positive experiences in this space around my gender identity. But they've been positive in the sense that I can see the intent is there, even if the practice isn't quite there yet. I see a medical profession really screaming out for more knowledge and education on how to create inclusive spaces, and I feel it's still so far behind. So please reach out if you think that would be helpful in your workplace.
Moving past that, the other thing that's really challenging for anyone experiencing perimenopause or menopause is the lack of research, data and knowledge around how it impacts different people and different bodies. Then there's the trial and error you go through to try to manage the symptoms. And of course that trial and error creates side effects that absolutely impact your work.
This is where I'm bringing these personal stories into the workplace. It has a huge impact on your time and your energy. You might already be feeling crap, and you're having to navigate these investigative processes and different treatments to try to manage your symptoms. Those symptoms often include things like insomnia, which I did experience for a couple of years (touch wood, I'm not experiencing that now), and brain fog, which is a huge problem in the workforce. It really does impact capability and capacity at times.
The other thing I want to bring in here is the impact of perimenopause on ADHD. You've heard me talk about ADHD in previous episodes, and I think I also mentioned this overlap. It's quite a thing. Your ADHD symptoms are exacerbated by hormone fluctuations, and in perimenopause those fluctuations are unpredictable. It can be really challenging to manage, particularly for those of us who are unmedicated for our ADHD, which is a lot of us, or for people who are undiagnosed and don't even understand that's what's happening. They're just experiencing the extreme end of the cognitive impacts of perimenopause, and the stress and anxiety impacts as well.
All this to say that your employees or managers who are experiencing perimenopause, and possibly neurodivergence as well, can be having a challenging time showing up to work and participating in work. That's not true for everybody. And that's where we get into some problems.
To tell you where I'm at at the moment: I'm accessing HRT. I use Estrogel, and that has its own challenges as a trans masc person using estrogen. It took me a little while to wrap my head around. But it has been a game changer for me, and there are some other medical interventions I've used that are really allowing me to flourish and manage this stage of my life quite positively. I understand the privilege in that, and that it may not hold, but for now I'm doing quite well.
That's not to say it doesn't still impact my capacity and my consistency in terms of how I show up each day for work. As an example, I'm recording this podcast much later this morning than I intended. I experienced quite significant brain fog. It's hard to explain what it's like. It's a combination of the perimenopause and the ADHD, where I literally lost a few hours just sitting in a chair in the sun. That sounds delightful, but it wasn't what I needed to be doing this morning.
I had to give myself grace, because I can. I'm my own boss. I know that any work I'd tried to do in that time wouldn't have been efficient or at my best anyway, particularly recording a podcast. So I was able to give myself that grace and work a bit differently and more flexibly today.
And this is where it leads into how workplaces manage people, particularly people at this life stage, because that's the reality of our experience. It doesn't make me less of a valuable employee in my business. It just means I have varying capacity and I have to work more with my energy. When things need to be done, they need to be done, and I'll do them. But when I'm able to create flexibility, move things around and work with my body and my brain, I'm a thousand times more effective and skilled than when I can't.
That's what we need managers and employees to know and understand. It's a huge shift after years of managing people by time rather than by outcome or output. And it's the exact same message I share when we talk about neurodivergence, disability, and people's different ways of working and sleep cycles.
Not all jobs can provide that kind of flexibility, but way more jobs can than do. That flexibility helps the organisation in terms of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, new ideas and high-quality work. And it helps the employee manage their health and wellbeing and show up in the way they want to.
If we can take away the stress and pressure of having to do a particular thing at a particular time, all of the time, we allow people to reduce their stress levels. We're much less likely to end up in performance discussions, stress leave, absenteeism and presenteeism. There's so much presenteeism that we're not measuring that could be solved through a more flexible approach to work practices.
I was doing some reading on this topic this morning to prepare, and it's interesting to see some of the things proposed that workplaces could do to support employees experiencing perimenopause or menopause. One of them is a policy. A menopause policy.
I don't find this particularly helpful. Of course there's a place for policies, and sometimes in these types of areas there is. But in this particular area, I don't see the value in a specific policy, because the supports and practices that help people going through perimenopause or menopause are the same practices and supports that employees in general need flexibility around or access to. When we take some of the specificity away, we reduce the potential for the work to lean into stigma and stereotypes, and to get into hiring managers' and promotion panels' heads about the capacity and capability of someone going through perimenopause or menopause.
One of the research studies showed that (I'm not giving specific figures here) around 65 percent of people experiencing perimenopause or menopause, and it was probably just women the study was looking at, believed that access to more leave was necessary during this time. But it was highly unlikely that somebody would actually access that leave, because accessing it felt like it put a big red light on your capacity, your capability and your participation in the workforce. It shouldn't, but it does. There is a lot of stigma around this.
So how do we manage that? Yes, employees experiencing perimenopause and menopause do need extra leave. But if we can frame it as more flexibility, so people can work at the times that make more sense to them, while still holding people to outputs and outcome-focused management, I think that's potentially a better approach than specific leave that someone then has to explain to their manager is why they're taking it.
In some high-trust environments, I think that would be fine. This is where it always comes down to the context you're working in. What's okay in your organisation? What's going to be the impact of a specific leave program in your organisation, and are people going to take it? Sometimes we just celebrate: yay, we've got menopause and perimenopause leave now. But if nobody takes it, it's like parental leave, where we've extended it to people of all genders and men still aren't taking it. It's not enough to just say the leave is there. We need people to take it when they need it.
So working on creating an environment where it's okay for people to take it is where it's at, I think. How might we do that? By having leaders in an organisation actually share that that's why they're not working this morning, or that's why they had to shift their meetings to the afternoon, because they didn't sleep the night before and the morning wasn't going to be good. That still has an impact on those leaders, but when you're already in a position of power, the stigma has less of an impact. That's the same with any of the identity attributes we take into a workplace. When we're in a leadership position, it's a little easier to role model what we want to see in the rest of the organisation.
It's also about leaders being conscious of their language, and looking at things like sensory control in a workplace. Can you control the temperature of your space? In many open plan offices you can't. So is there flexibility to work from home on the days you really need to? Or are we still stuck in a hybrid model of three set days in the office and two at home? True flexibility helps us work around these issues more easily, without having to say to somebody, "Hey, I'm having major hot flushes, I need the temperature changed." It shouldn't always be on the employee to share that.
Same with noise. People who are autistic and going through perimenopause or menopause can find their sensory sensitivities heightened during this time. So let's make sure we do the work on the sensory environment we're putting employees in every day, and on how they can have some control and agency over it. That's good practice across the board. It doesn't need to sit in a menopause policy. It's good practice when we're thinking about inclusion and inclusive practices.
Quite often what we hear is that people struggling through this stage of life may have a drop in their performance. If the first conversation from a manager is about performance and not support, that's where the problem starts. That's where you could potentially end up with stress leave, Fair Work matters, whatever it might be.
Let's start with a supportive conversation. If you're a leader and you've noticed an employee's performance has dropped a bit, regardless of who they are or what stage of life they're at, the first conversation should always be supportive. This is just good practice. "Hey, how are you going? How's the work going? Are you enjoying your role? What have the tasks been like for you? How are you managing work and home life?" These are conversations managers should be having with their employees before launching into something like, "I've noticed your performance has dropped," or, "You didn't meet this target on Friday, what are we going to do about it?" Starting from a supportive lens is going to be much more effective for everybody, and of course more human. That's what we want in leadership.
If there are workplace adjustments available for people experiencing perimenopause and menopause, let's make sure medical certificates aren't required. I've still seen workplace adjustment or flexibility policies that require medical evidence. We can't start from a base of no trust with our employees. I don't think that works or is helpful for anyone. Accessing medical support through this stage of life, or for a disability somebody might experience, is a privilege. Having a diagnosis of ADHD or autism is a privilege. Accessing support and care for perimenopause and menopause is fraught. So requiring people to have medical evidence and share it with their employer is icky, and I think we should avoid it. And we can avoid it.
A final point: I want to talk about the stigma issue. How do we reduce the stigma around people experiencing this stage of life, and how do we avoid making assumptions?
One of the things we talk about through a trans and gender inclusive lens is the language we use and the voices we centre. I find this area always quite controversial. People think there's some kind of gender neutrality movement going on if you don't say "women experiencing menopause and perimenopause". But there are people who aren't women who experience perimenopause and menopause, and I don't think it erases women to say "people experiencing perimenopause and menopause". If you feel really strongly about making sure the word "women" is in your initiatives, then do that, and also include gender diverse people. Make the language explicit so we're not invisible in the conversation.
Stigma is real. I've already talked about that a lot today. Let's be really conscious of it and put that lens over any initiatives we're introducing. If we're introducing support, will people feel they can take it? How do we enable people to feel they can use it? How can we keep confidentiality around it? Think these things through, and consult with people, particularly your employees: if we had this support, how would you access it? What would you feel comfortable doing? This needs to be considered rather than just rolling forward with a new initiative.
At the same time, raising awareness of how menopause and perimenopause affect employees needs to be done really sensitively and caringly. We don't want to create a deficit mentality where people going through this stage of life are seen as shitty employees. Let's be really conscious of the messaging we use when we look at this issue in the workplace. I think it's about focusing on how flexibility works in your organisation and how support is provided, and doing that in a way that's generic but also provides specificity for those who actually need it.
That probably covers what I wanted to share with you on this topic. I'm interested to hear what's been working in workplaces for others. I know there are people who have done some really good research and work in this space. So when you see these episodes pop up, send me your thoughts. I'd love to hear what good practices you're seeing, because they don't get shared around enough yet.
I also want to take a little time to talk about some of the work I'm doing at the moment. We're heading towards the end of 2026, and it's been so great to see DEI work have a bit of a resurgence. Speaking to a lot of other people in this space, there was a bit of a pause. We're now seeing some really positive movement again, and some really considered steps forward, which is a good thing. I talked about this in season one: sometimes a reckoning around a practice or a piece of work can help us sit, pause, and do better than we had, and improve our practice.
I'm getting requests again for inclusive leadership workshops, which is fantastic. Leaders need to be empowered to stand up for people in their organisation, to act on inclusion initiatives, changes and practices, to identify what systemic bias looks like in a process, a practice or the organisation, and then know what to do about it when they find it. These are skills we're not teaching that we need to be teaching.
If you're interested in having a conversation with me about that, I'd really welcome it. I think it's a super valuable place for leaders to sit for a couple of hours, and that's usually exactly what they find too. They need the space to unpack it, where it's okay to be where they're at and not have to be the leader in that moment. We can explore people's understanding, they can ask the hard questions they're grappling with, and we can work through their issues and challenges and come up with some ideas and next steps. So reach out if that's of interest to you.
I'm also really fortunate to be working on some projects at the moment that are looking to create more trans and gender diverse inclusion in workplaces and organisations. If that's something you haven't done yet, I'd highly encourage you to reach out. It's something we can do in a global environment that is not friendly to trans and gender diverse people right now. We're seeing so much rhetoric in Australia that is really hitting home and impacting people's experiences. It doesn't feel as safe to be trans at this moment in time as it did a couple of years ago. Workplaces can be doing something really positive about that, so please reach out if that's something of value to you.
I'll leave you with that, and I'll go and manage my temperature and deal with my brain fog, which hopefully hasn't been too distracting for you today. I look forward to hearing your ideas, thoughts and experiences of initiatives in this space that have worked.
So let's keep going. The work doesn't stop. DEI will not die. Whether it gets a name change here and there, whether we experience pushback and resistance, we keep pushing forward, because there are inequalities and we want to do something about them.