Working through the menopause

PA 244/08 Some women sail through it, others find it a challenge but few women like to talk openly about the menopause. With 70 per cent of women aged between 45 and 59 now in work, The University of Nottingham has been commissioned by the British Occupational Health Research Foundation to ask women, in total confidence, about their experience of working through the menopause. The menopause happens to all women, usually between the ages of 45 and 55. Researchers are hoping that several hundred women in this age group will answer their questionnaire "€" the more responses they get, the more powerful the results will be. The research team hopes the results, based on the views of women in 6 different organisations throughout the UK, will provide useful information for women about how to cope with the menopause at work. It will also help employers and doctors support and advise them. Although women constitute nearly half of the UK"€ s workforce and the menopause is a significant event in the lives of all women, its effects on women"€ s working life have been subject to very little research.