Menopause at Work: The Career Cost No One Is Talking About for Women Leaders
I read a piece of research this week that stopped me in my tracks. Not because it was shocking but because it finally put numbers behind what we see every day at The Menopause Maze with women leading at the top of organisations.
It was new research from Benenden Health showed the devastating consequences of menopause at work on women, especially the cost of compromise on their careers, which includes stepping back from opportunities and not stepping forward for promotions. The data also revealed what see every single day across countries and companies:
92% of HR leaders believe their menopause support is effective
40% of women don’t even know their company has a menopause policy
47% of women are compromising how they work just to keep their jobs
Read that again.
Nearly half of women are adjusting how they lead, how they show up, and what they go for just to stay in the room and yet their HR leaders are celebrating huge success. It shows the stark reality that menopause awareness is failing especially for women leaders.
What Menopause Looks Like in Real Life For Women Leaders
This doesn’t show up in a menopause policy document and organisations are failing women leaders in their masses, not just the current leaders but the pipeline too. For women leaders it shows up in moments like these:
The moment she hesitates when she wouldn’t have before.
The moment she doesn’t push back in the boardroom.
The moment she decides not to go for the bigger role this cycle.
The moment she chooses to stay where she is because it feels more manageable.
This Is Where Careers Quietly Shift
By the time women reach this stage of their career - their peri menopause, menopause and post menopause decade, they’ve already done the hard part. They’ve built credibility, they’ve delivered results and they’ve earned their seats at the top tables of power, leadership and influence.
This should be the decade where that investment of personal sacrifice and professional contribution pays off.
Where they step into bigger roles, where they increase influence and where they convert years of work into real returns.
Instead, what I see is this:
Women holding back when they should be stepping forward
Women turning down opportunities they would have taken 5 years ago
Women staying in roles that are now too small for them
Women adjusting their ambition just to keep performing
Not because they’ve lost capability, but because they lack the new leadership toolkit that they need to lead in this new transition time of their leadership careers, when the stakes are the highest and the pay off in power, authority, impact and influence leading to top C-suite roles, equity, shares, and NED roles should be returning, and yet most women are compromising.
The Bit No One Wants to Say Out Loud
Most organisations think they’ve handled menopause at work. They’ve got a menopause policy and they’ve run some awareness session and manager training. They've even part of the 14% of employers who've rolled out a menopause benefit at scale. They’ve ticked the box.
But none of that touches this level, because this isn’t about awareness.
It’s about performance. And at senior level, there is very little room for anything that quietly erodes how you lead.
We undertook extensive research of our own at The Menopause Maze and 73% of women leaders said they would actively move to a new or competitor employer if it offered them a specialist executive menopause career coach to help them keep leading at the highest levels of leadership. Not to mention that this underscores previous research undertaken by The Bank of America with The National Menopause Foundation which shows that 72% of employers think they offer a menopause supportive workplace and yet only 32% of women agree.
Why This Is a Bigger Problem Than Women Leaving
We hear a lot about women leaving the workforce. But the bigger issue is women staying and compromising.
Because when a senior woman steps back, even slightly:
She doesn’t go for the promotion
She doesn’t push for the bigger remit
She doesn’t put herself forward in the same way
And over time, that changes the trajectory of her career and this is how women end up in smaller roles than they should be in. This is how leadership pipelines weaken without anyone noticing why, and this is how organisations lose impact without ever seeing it on a report.
If You’re a Woman Leading at This Level, Read This Carefully
You cannot afford to wait for your company to catch up. You cannot afford to spend 7–10 years of your career, which is the 7-10 years natural transition of menopause adjusting, scaling back, or second-guessing how you lead because of menopause at work.
This is your highest-value decade. And it moves fast.
You need a way to stay sharp, decisive, visible and influential regardless of what’s happening in the background. That is exactly why I built the NOPAUSE Method. Its built for women operating at the level where the stakes are highest.
What to Do Next
If you recognise yourself in this don’t sit on it.
Start with the diagnostic.
Understand exactly where your leadership is being compromised before it becomes visible to everyone else.
Take The NOPAUSE™ Diagnostic Scorecard. It's the world's only professional prescription for women in C-suite leadership. It gives you a personalised data-dashboard of the hidden areas of menopause on your leadership career, on your impact and influence and future options and provides you with a personal report on what steps to take to define your most effective route to retain and reach the highest leadership levels so you can lead and live without limits, all with no pause necessary.
This isn’t about menopause.
It’s about what it’s quietly costing you in your C-suite career, because the real risk isn’t that you leave. It’s that you stay and become less visible, less influential, and less impactful and you don't realise the returns you've spent 20 years of your leadership career building.
About The Author
Fiona McKay is the multi-award winning CEO of The Menopause Maze™ and is also known in the media as The Menopause Career Coach™. She the world's only professional menopause coach, peak performance coach and business strategist for elite, executive women leaders in boardrooms. She has been awarded the coveted titles of Best Executive Menopause Support in The Global Pharma Awards, Career Coach of The Year 2025, Business Advisor of The Year 2025, The Most Influential Women's Health and Career Support Business Women and Menopause Champion of The Year. She is the Menopause Career Coach C-suite women and workplaces go to when they want to achieve their biggest career and boldest business growth goals so they can lead limitlessly through all stages of menopause.
She is a featured strategic menopause career and business coach in The Guardian, The Independent, OK Magazine and as a menopause business and boardroom expert on live TV including BBC News and ITV News.
Fiona is also available for keynote speaking, panel chairing and conference hosting at menopause awareness month events, women's leadership and business conferences and for fronting brand campaigns as a leading menopause influencer.
The Menopause Maze works globally with the world's leading business women leaders in the UK, US and beyond.
You can connect with Fiona at: fmckay@themenopausemaze.com.