Many sceptical readers will have had hot flushes when opening their newspapers last week only to discover that being menopausal had apparently suddenly been officially reclassified as an actual ‘disability’. On February 21st, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) put out some formal guidelines warning U.K. employers that, under the terms of the Equality Act 2010, they had “legal obligations” to make “reasonable adjustments” to the working conditions of menopausal employees or else face potentially costly legal fines.
“Reasonable adjustments” like what? Subsequent media reporting suggested firms employing ladies of a certain vintage might need to allow them to “wear cooler uniforms and work from home on hot days” or even give them “quiet rooms to rest in and have fans or air conditioning in their workplaces”, whilst if colleagues “ridicule women for their problems, it may constitute harassment”, to say nothing of slipping any ice-cubes down their knickers.
The EHRC’s ‘friendly reminder’ came in the wake of an Employment Tribunal involving a menopausal social worker named Maria Rooney, who claimed to have been “discriminated against and victimised” by her employer, Leicester City Council, due to the severe effects of her symptoms (i.e., she took lots of time off with stress). Her wider case still awaits final closure, but judges have already ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, being menopausal can count as having an official ‘disability’, just so long as the symptoms can be shown to “have a long-term and substantial impact on a woman’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities” for 12 months or more.
The EHRC backed Rooney’s case, as well it might, considering the quango’s ultimate bosses in Whitehall seem equally obsessed with the various life-phases of the female menstrual cycle. The country may be falling to bits, with Islamists owning the streets, the national debt spiralling out of control, our nuclear missiles mis-firing and our national borders non-existent, but still the Government somehow has the time and money available to set up a “U.K. Menopause Taskforce” and appoint a “Menopause Employment Champion” to encourage (or, more likely, force) major firms to do more to pander towards their more litigious-minded 50-plus female staff-members.
Women’s Lib-tards
Various female, human-identifying MPs rushed out to add their shrill voices of agreement to the EHRC guidelines, from all sides of the House – a great example of the Uniparty in action! According to someone called Mims Davies, who would appear to be His Majesty’s Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, such measures are somehow “vital for the growth of our economy”, as otherwise all women in their 40s and 50s will immediately flee the British workforce in severe hormonal distress, or something. Perhaps this would not be quite such a bad thing, as such a scenario would also flush 51-year-old Caroline Nokes MP out of employment.
The current Women and Equalities Committee Chair, Nokes may pose as a Conservative politician, but is clearly a Blairite right down to her very last remaining gamete, spouting out dead-eyed post-1997 mandarinese upon the topic like the following:
I hope this guidance helps – we know too many women are forced out of work due to challenging menopause symptoms. Of course the menopause is not a disability and should not be seen as that, rather something that will pass with the right support and medication.
That’s classic pseudo-feminist Newspeak, isn’t it? Woke Nokes is placed in a difficult rhetorical position here. Naturally, not being a true feminist who just wants men and women to be equal, but an identitarian Leftist in ‘Conservative’ guise who wishes at all times to poke the patriarchy, she desires to simultaneously portray women as being victims of their harsh and no-doubt overwhelmingly male employers, but also as inherently independent and empowered modern go-getters like she thinks she herself is. Therefore, Nokes welcomes the EHRC’s guidance officially classifying the menopause as a potential form of disability, whilst at the same time also explicitly denying that it is one at all. So which is it, Caroline? Presumably it can be either or both, it just depends upon which particular special-interest, special-pleading argument she wishes to make on any given day of the week.
And don’t go thinking things will get any better when Labour get into office. Labour’s Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary Anneliese Dodds, distinctly post-menopausal in demeanour herself, also welcomed the EHRC’s guidance, but claimed “women experiencing menopause deserve more”, promising that, after winning the next election, her party would “require large employers to produce Menopause Action Plans” for their staff.
Menopause for Thought
There are several pretty obvious flaws with the above thinking. For one thing, some menopausal women suffer very badly, and (despite my jokes, which are aimed here against the blatant politicisers of the subject, not the patients themselves) do deserve actual sympathy, whilst others barely even notice the whole thing. A letter in the Times recounted the response of one woman to the whole phenomenon: “I think I had it one day after lunch.”
Women lucky enough to get away similarly unscathed could very easily simply begin swinging the lead, demanding days of ‘working’ at home whilst watching Bargain Hunt, or special breaks to avoid doing any actual labour for a few hours per week in quiet rooms for no good reason, upon credible threat of taking their employers to tribunals, helpful EHRC guidelines clutched firmly in hand.
Furthermore, having to sanction potentially inconvenient patterns of home-working (what if the employee in question is a teacher, surgeon, or helicopter-pilot?), whilst investing in quiet rooms and air-con, is obviously going to add unwanted and unnecessary costs to doing business, as will producing Soviet-style nonsense like Menopause Action Plans.
And what will these ‘Action Plans’ actually look like? For many employers, I suspect the most likely (unwritten) such Action Plan will simply consist of the single sentence: “I will henceforth never employ any more middle-aged women if I can possibly get away with it, because I don’t want to end up getting sued over absolutely bloody nothing.” As the main stated purpose of the EHRC scheme is supposedly to prevent menopausal-age women from being forced out of the workforce, this would seem rather counterproductive.
Plus, there is the whole issue of the reasons given by the EHRC’s supporters for why employers might wish to dismiss menopausal females in the first place: standard symptoms are listed as debilitating ailments like brain-fog, confusion, inability to concentrate, lethargy, hot flushes, voting Liberal Democrat and the need for lashings and lashings of paid time off work in consequence.
Even though only some women actually suffer from the above symptoms, arbitrarily classifying every woman pushing 50 in the workforce as being, essentially, latently disabled, seems perilously close to legislating to decree that females as a whole are inherently unfit for any meaningful employment at all, when quite clearly this is most untrue: it’s just Caroline Nokes, Mims Davies and Anneliese Dodds who are so affected.
A Woman’s Wisdom
So, whom do you vote for if you don’t want any of the above menopausal madnesses to take place? No actual mainstream Uniparty MPs, obviously: they all suffer from permanent woke ideological brain-fog. Instead, you could do far worse than try casting your ballot for journalist Kate Muir, author of the book Everything You Need To Know About the Menopause (But Were Too Afraid To Ask). Following the release of the EHRC’s guidance, Muir went on BBC Radio 4 saying that, unfortunately, it was physically impossible for governments of any stripe to pass legislation giving women all their youthful hormones, eggs and energy back.
Muir, who clearly doesn’t suffer from an addled brain herself, told her interviewer the new guidelines made no sense and that those who drafted them “don’t know enough about [the] menopause to be writing laws around it”. Muir explained that “It’s not a disability, it’s something every woman goes through, obviously,” other than perhaps Ursula Andress in She.
Whilst some women may indeed require a little understanding of their temporary condition, Muir’s view was that any sensible employer “should just be humane about that. I don’t know if we need to entrench this as legislation”. Surely the true issue here was ensuring women who did genuinely become physically or mentally debilitated during the menopause should be given reliable access to the necessary medical care, rather than to grasping employment lawyers? “It’s a matter of health, not law,” Muir argued.
No need for official legislation? Just leave human beings to sort things out informally amongst themselves on a purely common sense basis? I’d certainly vote for Ms. Muir with a sensible platform like that, but sadly such a concept is entirely alien to the current governing-class mindset, which is one of purest Gesellschaft over Gemeinschaft.
Allowing professionals to use their common sense rather than having automatic recourse to the law or pseudo-academic accreditation is now wholly taboo within the chronically overregulated public and corporate sectors alike. For example, would you like to become “menopause-friendly accredited”? In the good old days (i.e., pre-1997), a sensible boss could have just told a visibly affected employee: “Look, love, I can see you’re a bit off it today – just finish an hour or two early, then catch up on the backlog in your own time, when you feel up to it. The brothel can easily manage without you on Christmas Day, at least.” Today, however, such an action, wholly uncodified as it would be on an Official Labour Party Menopause Action Plan™, seen and signed-off observantly by Anneliese Dodds herself, would of course be considered highly sexist and irresponsible in nature.
Flush With Public Cash
Instead, it is clearly deemed infinitely preferable to approach Over the Bloody Moon, a registered charity – its founder, Lesley Salem, is here pictured entering the doors of 10 Downing Street, to begin the whole anti-male woke witch-hunt on an officially-sanctioned basis – whose boring-sounding training courses for corporations and schools allow bosses to become “menopause friendly accredited” in the first place. Quite what being so ‘accredited’ actually means, I have no idea: perhaps you’re given a gold star and a little printed certificate on a piece of nice coloured sugar-paper to go with all your childhood swimming-badges and ‘Netball Player of the Year’ awards from primary school?
“Removing the muddle from menopause!” is the body’s slogan, but a critic may say such people actually only benefit from overcomplicating the issue unnecessarily. Over the Bloody Moon’s biggest money-making scheme valuable contribution towards the future well-being of women worldwide is its patented ‘MenoVest’, billed as “the world’s only menopause simulator”, a kind of thermal waistcoat filled with heated pads designed to “deliver intense hot flushes” in the user – you can see compliant male MPs trying them on here. How long before some manipulative third-sector body manages to persuade Wes Streeting to try using tampons?
What’s the point of all that, then? Well, clueless male bosses are supposed to don a MenoVest temporarily, roast alive in it for a few hours, and then emerge as fully changed people, aware and empathetic towards their menopausal female employees who have to endure such temperature-changes themselves for real. Rachel Levine probably wears one non-stop, for extra authenticity.
The MenoVest costs actual legal tender to hire. As far as I could tell, its creators’ website doesn’t specify how much coinage precisely: always an ominous sign. It would doubtless be far cheaper for any concerned employer to just strap a few hot-water-bottles to their torso then don a burka, but within the public sector, money is no object – because the money in question is always yours, not theirs. This was why, back in November 2022, the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror chief (and, much more importantly, also the Met’s ‘HeForShe Gender Equality Lead’), Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, donned a MenoVest himself before attending an official meeting, in order to mark that key occasion on our contemporary secular post-Comtean calendar, World Menopause Awareness Month.
According to the product’s website, besides hot-flushes, the MenoVest also has the key aim of “triggering brain-fog, palpitations, headaches, anxiety and a loss of confidence”, which are hardly a constellation of symptoms you would want Britain’s leading counter-terrorism policeman to suffer during an important meeting – but, thankfully, the meeting was only before the Met’s Environment and Sustainability Board, so it wasn’t actually an important meeting at all, just yet another total load of meaningless toss.
Jukes Box Jury
Discussing his experience later, Mr. Jukes (or possibly Mrs. Jukes, if he was still in costume and method-acting) spoke of undergoing “authentic” menopausal symptoms, which does rather raise the question: ‘How would you know?’ “Like others who tried it, I don’t think wearing the MenoVest qualifies me to ‘mansplain’ the menopause,” Jukes said, before going on to do so anyway. The heat from the little electronic boxes inside the device, he said, came to him in “waves”, making him feel “uncomfortable”, which was “at times distracting”, leading him to go through the meeting “really losing my train of thought”.
Well… if that is indeed the case, then those aren’t symptoms I’d particularly like any person whose job it (supposedly) is to keep us all safe from mad jihadists to be suffering during a meeting of any kind, even one about as thoroughly unimportant a topic as how high or low the levels of CO2 emissions from panda-cars are these days.
Supposedly, by engaging in such identitarian stunts, Mr. Jukes was acting as a “menopause champion” for women, increasing sympathy for sufferers’ plight. In reality, he was just peddling an unedifying (and surely rather sexist?) narrative of perpetual victimhood which makes women sound like helpless, weak-minded and inferior incapacitated invalids who are wholly unfit to fill any positions of public or commercial responsibility whatsoever once their own ova treacherously start dying on them. The EHRC, Over the Bloody Moon, et al., are, I would suggest, doing much the same thing.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
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