Opinion

Bimpe Archer: Guess what - apparently the patriarchy has just found out about menopause

Just because you have only just noticed something is an issue doesn't mean it has only just "emerged
Just because you have only just noticed something is an issue doesn't mean it has only just "emerged Just because you have only just noticed something is an issue doesn't mean it has only just "emerged

IT seems we need to talk about menopause. No, stick with me, really, we do.

According to the Equality Commission "menopause and how best to manage it in the workplace" was the second most discussed subject at its employer update events last year.

So, yes, that does mean we're already talking about menopause. In fact, even Mariella Frostrup was talking about it recently in a BBC documentary.

The reason we're not finished talking about, however, is the rest of the tweet used by the Equality Commission to alert us to the subject.

It has a blog, you see, looking at "this emerging issue".

Emerging issue? Women have been going through the menopause since there have been women – that's the way being a woman works (It's to do with hormones and childbearing, there are books you can read if this isn't ringing any bells).

Women have also been working for many hundreds of years. For several decades now they haven't even had to give up their jobs when they get married.

In 1950 women left the labour force on average at age 63.9. This fell to below 60 in the mid 1980s, but has since climbed to similar levels today.

Considering menopause usually occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, we can safely conclude that, even in the `early' retirement years around 1980, there were a heck of a lot of employees going through the menopause.

So, for around 70 years, women in work have also been in menopause.

And yet, in 2018, it is seen as an "emerging issue".

"How can that be?" I asked a journalist colleague.

"Because `we don't talk about these things'. Honestly, I went to the GP for blood tests and it was like a Les Dawson sketch," she told me.

"The male doctor turned beetroot red when I broached the subject and the nurse couldn't bring herself to say the words to me. She kept shielding her lips with her hand and mouthing `the change' at me. And those are the healthcare professionals."

This was bewildering to me as I've never had much embarrassment around what are cringingly known as `women's problems'. I remember, as a teenager, my mother asking in an murmured undertone if I needed and "S Ts" and me asking in baffled normal tones, "Do you mean sanitary towels?".

Today not only do we talk about periods, teenagers are campaigning to end period poverty and ensure no schoolgirl misses school because she can't afford sanitary products. There are even badges Girl Guides can and are wearing with pride.

Football teams are even providing sanitary products to female fans.

It is good that we are being open about basic everyday matters. It is only by bringing things into daylight and talking about them frankly that we can work through any associated problems.

Still, the phraseology bothers me. Just because something has not been widely discussed until now doesn't mean that it has not existed until now. It is not an "emerging issue", it is an issue that employers are finally getting round to tackling.

It has been the same with every single issue that has been overlooked by the establishment which suddenly forces its way onto its agenda.

Racism was `a thing' long before the campaigning which led to the 1976 Race Relations Act. Women have faced sexual harassment and abuse long before the `Me Too' and `Times Up' movement captured the public imagination. Black Lives have always Mattered and `toxic masculinity' has been blighting the lives of men, women and children long before Gillette made a US TV advertisement.

I was taken to task on Twitter last week for highlighting an article discussing the burden on female politicians to be `likeable' where it is not expected of their male counterparts in the same way. The account warned me somewhat patronisingly about the problem with (I paraphrase for brevity) making everything about gender because then the real issues aren't taken seriously.

When I was a child I used to assume that a band's first album/song was the first one I heard playing on the radio. I was a child, we expect children to be naïve.

Just because you have only just noticed something is an issue doesn't mean it has only just "emerged".

And just because you don't have the lived experience to recognise something is an issue, doesn't mean it isn't one.