‘You’re not doing this alone’: Pip Edwards’ advice to Aussie women experiencing menopause

Pip Edwards has spoken about her experience of going through menopause at 39, and reveals her advice to Australian women experiencing it themselves.

EXCLUSIVE

More than half of Australian women struggling with menopause symptoms have either quit their job, taken time off or are considering cutting back due a lack of workplace support, new research shows.

Less than a third of women said their workplace offered flexible arrangements, while 45 per cent of those experiencing symptoms — which can include sleep disorder, memory lapses, muscle and joint pain, hot flushes and headaches — felt they weren’t performing their best at work, according to Dove Menopause Insight research.

Influencer and businesswoman Pip Edwards started getting menopause symptoms at the age of 39 and said five years later she was still learning how to manage her experience, urging women not to suffer in silence.

“Normalising the conversations is the number one step,” she said.

Ms Edwards said she would have loved a central hub of information for symptoms and remedies like the website being launched this week by Dove in partnership with Menopause Friendly Australia (MFA).

Pip Edwards is supporting a Dove campaign to raise awareness of menopause and get more workplaces offering supports to women. Picture: Supplied

“As a woman, you kind of have to piece it together yourself, there’s no one road map and I’m letting other women know that it is a bit of a hard one to tackle,” she said.
“At the end of the day, you just want to know that you’re not doing this alone.”

Ms Edwards said she was in “denial” when she first started experiencing “extreme” hot flushes and struggled to sleep, feeling she had to keep fronting up to work without making adjustments for her symptoms.

“I never thought it would happen to me at 39, so it wasn’t even on my radar,” she said.
“I would turn up to work obviously a bit frazzled, very drained, quite tired, emotional, and I would have to put on this brave front and not talk about what I’ve just experienced over night.

“Well you can only put up a front for so long.”
The fashion designer and creative director who co-founded the sportswear label P.E. Nation said she later learned her mother had experienced symptoms early in life, which was hereditary.

“She was obviously of a different age and a time where it was very taboo to talk about, so she never spoke about that with me,” Ms Edwards said.

Pip Edwards says she wishes there was a central hub of information for her to access when she first started experiencing menopause symptoms. Picture: Supplied,

In the hopes of further normalising the issue, she revealed her mum — now in her 80s — is even now on the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) patch, as is Ms Edwards.

“I’m on the patch and the pill, I’m on it every day for the foreseeable future,” she said.

“I’m still learning and things are changing continually, but all I can say is keep talking about it, because women need to connect and know there is no set road map, all we know is what we’ve been through.”

Ms Edwards encouraged women to understand their symptoms and how it impacted their productivity at work so they could make clear and specific requests to employers about how to manage things.
“We’re talking about half the population here, it’s a natural part of life,” she said.
“And we’re leading very different lives now, we’re working, juggling many hats, the impacts on our body might not have been as prevalent as two generations before so this needs to be at the forefront of workplace discussions.”

The Dove study, which included 1030 working females aged 35 to 60, found half of women said flexible arrangements would make it easier for them to manage their symptoms, more than a third wanted the ability to control temperature and two in five wanted someone within their organisation who knows about menopause and was open to discussing related issues.

Dove has launched a dedicated menopause information website offering practical tools and resources for women and businesses, such as policy templates and conversation starters.

MFA chief executive Grace Molloy said the tools would make it “easier for everyone to talk about menopause at work”.

“(This) moves us closer to our mission to enable every workplace in Australia to be menopause friendly,” she said.

Originally published as ‘You’re not doing this alone’: Pip Edwards’ advice to Aussie women experiencing menopause