‘M’ word’s no longer a taboo subject – and it’s about time

Menopause. A less sexy word in the English language does not exist. A more awkward topic is almost impossible to find. But today we’re going to talk about it. Picture: istock

There are some topics of conversation it’s said should be avoided in polite company. Politics and religion, for example. For the life of me, I’ve never understood why. In our family, to this day, they remain the entree before the main course at pretty much every family gathering.

I guess there are just some people who are too slight of constitution to go on that ride, and if that’s you, well, a word of warning: Buckle up because, conversationally speaking, it’s about to get real.

How real, I hear you ask? I have one word for you. Menopause. A less sexy word in the English language does not exist. A more awkward topic is almost impossible to find. But today we’re going to talk about it because it feels like, all of a sudden, everyone I know is talking about it, along with the fact that certain areas of women’s health are still considered taboo or approached differently than the same challenges that face men.

Believe me when I say this is not something I ever imagined I would write about, but it truly feels like there’s a revolution of sorts at play. There’s a quiet roar building in the distance. Women are, for the first time, I think, grabbing the microphone and refusing to be quiet when it comes to their health and the specific issues that our gender faces as we age.

For eons, generations of women have been dismissed when attempting to navigate the most difficult medical conditions specific to the female gender and our biology.

My own mother, who suffered terribly with severe endometriosis, was repeatedly misdiagnosed, told that the anxiety and other symptoms she suffered due to the wild hormonal imbalances that are a hallmark of the disease were all in her head.

In February, this newspaper reported on the staggering number of women living their entire lives with crippling, debilitating, recurring urinary tract infections. In that report, mother-of-four Lisa George described being told at the age of 28 her only option was to have her bladder removed. That the pain (again) was all in her head.

A friend of mine, through gritted teeth, describes going to her ­female GP after experiencing what she correctly assumed was a hot flush only to be told “good luck, better learn how to dress in layers”.

The productivity lost to menopause alone costs the Australian economy $17bn a year. Who knew? Picture: iStock

I laughed at first, with her, not at her, but it’s really not that funny, is it? I mean, imagine being a fit, healthy person, going about your business, doing boringly normal stuff, then all of a sudden you start sweating like an Italian concreter on a 40-degree day. It’s obscene.

These are the subjects our mothers and grandmothers spoke about in hushed tones behind closed doors, if at all. Heaven forbid someone would mention the dreaded “Change” … It’s like this singular part of a woman’s health journey is some kind of Voldemort, that must not be named.

The truth is this: if a bloke in his 40s walks into a GP and has low testosterone and erectile dysfunction, he gets a tube of the good gear and some little blue pills and off he trots. Long live life! We have the science to successfully navigate ageing.

If a woman at the same age walks in with low oestrogen, perhaps dealing with insomnia, inexplicable anxiety while also intermittently burning up like a human sacrifice, many are still sent packing, like my friend was, with nothing but best wishes and advice on how to dress for the occasion. “The Occasion”, of course, if it goes untreated or unaddressed, results in a debilitating and miserable existence for women in the back half of their lives.

No thank you. Nope. No more.

If you want to look at women’s health through the lens of economics, here’s a fun fact: the productivity lost to menopause alone costs the Australian economy $17bn a year. Who knew?

Grace Molloy did. The WA-based businesswoman heads up a company called Menopause Friendly Australia, a workplace services provider that offers menopause training, membership and accreditation to help employers first open up the conversation by raising awareness and, second, adapt their workplace to be res­ponsive to the needs of women in mid-life.

“The Menopause Friendly Accreditation has been commonplace in the UK for years,” she says. “This cohort of women is the fastest-growing workforce demographic, and with employers battling to attract and retain talent, this just makes good business sense.”

What I’m observing, the conversations I’m listening to, are ­absolutely fascinating. It’s like women have all of a sudden woken up from a deep slumber, shed their bashfulness on a tender and hugely vulnerable subject like this, and let out an almighty “Silent? Oh hell, no. Not anymore.”

It actually took me weeks of internal wrestling to even settle on writing this column.

“What if people think I’m talking about me,” I said to a girlfriend.

“Well, love,” she said. “You did write 1200 words last year on turning 50.”

It feels like there’s been this flawed paradigm around how women are expected to manage ageing versus men. Men are encouraged to age with all the pharmaceutical help they can muster. Women? The approach has a real “accept your fate and deal with it” kind of vibe. Just let your hormonal bits and bobs start to decay and go sit in the corner.

I can’t help but wonder if the current generation of women in their 40s and 50s have been inspired by the girls and young women we’ve raised and are raising. As teenagers, we never really talked about getting our periods. I remember in primary school, all the girls in our class (all 12 of us, I went to a tiny state primary school in Perth) gathered on the bottom oval at school one lunchtime, where the boys couldn’t see us. Our mums must have conspired to tell us all the facts of life in the same week. It happens every month!? Our disgust was palpable.

Thus began several years of running the emotional gauntlet of going to school or out to the movies or a friend’s place and hoping mother nature wouldn’t make you a woman and humiliate you in one fell swoop.

I look at my niece’s generation and am in quiet awe of their level of self-possession, sense of personal boundaries and agency over their bodies, their health and the conversations about both. The things they have open conversations about. I have no recollection of being that together at the same age. We dutiful Gen Xers did as we were told.

Perhaps that’s why the worm is turning. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been the generation of good girls who just got on with it, ate our veggies and accepted what we were told? As one mate said to me as I was writing this, “I could not give less f..ks about talking about this in public. Why should we?”

Good point. Why indeed? Ultimately, that is an individual choice but as a public health issue, it’s time for a change.