Menopause at Work in 2025: The Year The Menopause Conversation Finally Grew Up For C-Suite Women Leaders
In 2025, menopause at work stopped being about 'support’ and became a strategic leadership issue with consequences.
At The Menopause Maze™, this wasn’t the year of awareness campaigns or wellbeing sessions. It was the year we entered menopause into the performance, risk and progression agenda - the very place where senior C-suite leaders, boards and high-performing women actually make decisions.
This is what changed. This is what we built. And this is why 2026 will look very different because of it.
From Awareness to Architecture And Why 2025 Was the Turning Point
For years, menopause at work existed in fragments for women and workplaces:
policies without uptake
benefits without strategy
training without impact.
What was missing wasn’t workplace goodwill. It was infrastructure. In 2025, The Menopause Maze™ closed that gap by reframing menopause as a leadership operating-system issue, not a wellbeing add-on.
Menopause became visible for what it is:
a performance risk
a retention risk
a succession and promotability risk.
And most importantly it's a fixable one, when approached correctly.
The Breakthrough Achievement: The World's First Career Diagnostics That Changed Everything For Women In the C-Suite
The most significant contribution of 2025 wasn’t our content or commentary. It was the creation and deployment of diagnostics that replaced career impact guesswork with personalised data and recommendations that keep women's leadership careers.
Enter The NOPAUSE™ Scorecards.
Described as “blood work for your professional life” became the first of its kind tools to:
Show women where their leadership performance and career trajectory was being affected and why
Give organisations data they could act on, not anecdotes they could ignore.
This single shift changed everything.
Women worldwide now had the data to course correct. Workplaces stopped guessing. Boards started paying attention.
➡️ Learn more about our career diagnostics for women leaders:
https://www.themenopausemaze.com/for-women
Tangible Impact for C-Suite and Aspiring C-Suite Women
In 2025, elite C-suite women, aspiring C-suite women and women C-suite founders did not come to The Menopause Maze™ for motivation. They came because they needed professional answers, fast.
What changed:
Executive decision-making confidence was restored
Risk-aversion was identified and not mislabelled
Executive presence was recalibrated, not “worked on”
Career momentum was protected at critical inflection points
Women regained strategic clarity without menopause disclosure pressure
Careers were kept, promotions were achieved and women stayed in their top leadership seats.
For many women leaders, this was the first time menopause was addressed without diminishing ambition. Our work providing professional menopause coaching operating at C-suite leadership level was about career strategy, maintaining peak performance, progression and promotability not symptoms management.
Measurable Impact for Workplaces, Boards and Leadership Pipelines
2025 marked a shift in how we helped organisations approach menopause at work. The question stopped being: 'We've got a menopause policy so we're covered' and became - “What is this already costing us and how do we meet the needs of our leadership layer - current and pipeline?”
Our NOPAUSE™ career diagnostics enabled organisations to gain visibility into:
where leadership capability was quietly eroding
why high-performing women were disengaging without disclosure
which roles and levels were most exposed to risk and why.
Menopause entered board-level risk, talent and succession conversations not as emotion, but as evidence.
➡️ Explore our workplace menopause diagnostics and strategy:
https://www.themenopausemaze.com/workplace
Media Moments That Reframed Menopause at Work
Our media and podcast appearances in 2025 were not about profile-building.
They were about changing the frame for senior decision-makers and women leaders.
We appeared on:
360 Leaders Podcast
Elliott Scott HR Podcast
HR & L&D Podcast
Events Dear Boy Podcast
NOPAUSE Career Conversations
The Luxe Leap Podcast
And one message landed consistently - menopause is not a confidence issue. It is not a resilience issue. It is a leadership performance issue that can kill C-suite careers in their tracks.
This aligns with wider research now emerging at global level, including McKinsey's 2025 Women in Work report.
Awards That Reflected Our Systemic Impact, Not Popularity
Recognition in 2025 reflected our growing influence and outcomes globally which include awards for:
Most Influential Women’s Health & Career Businesswoman
Business Coaching Service of The Year
Winner of The Global 100 in M&A
These awards acknowledged our work that changed how menopause at work is understood, discussed and acted upon.
They also cemented The Menopause Maze™ as a leading voice in the field and a trusted menopause keynote speaker for organisations ready to move beyond tokenism, to truly investing and protecting the future of women in leadership through all stages of menopause at work.
What Was Actually Built in 2025
Behind the scenes, 2025 delivered something rare in this space:
A diagnostic-first menopause leadership ecosystem
A shared language women can use without career exposure
A commercial, evidence-led framework workplaces can act on
A methodology that moves menopause from HR initiative to leadership and talent strategy.
This wasn’t content creation.
It was category construction and it's now the multi-award winning NOPAUSE™ method.
Why 2026 Will Look Different Because of 2025
Because of the work we did this year:
Women leaders will stop leaving at the peak of expertise
Leadership pipelines will be protected, not patched
Boards will be forced to confront previously invisible risk
Menopause will no longer sit outside performance conversations.
2025 was the year the tools were built.
2026 will be the year organisations are held accountable for using them.
If menopause at work is affecting leadership performance, progression or retention in your organisation we have the data to truly understand it.