For the last in our World Menopause Day 2023 series, we combined an article and some recent case law to think about some of the things that have been discussed this week through these blog posts.
Evidence-based and evidence-based social care practice is about research, but it is also based on legislation, policy and case law, and this article, combined with the two cases, illustrates that link and allows us think about how we can address the issue of menopause more generally for social care and social work practice.
The last article in this series is another publication from 2023, this time from Gender, Work and Organization. For this one we return to the work environment; This is where most of the research attention is being paid, and because it also links to two recent Employment Tribunal (ET) rulings that have sparked some interesting discussions in the woods.
The issue explored in this study is the gendered nature of menopause, which while receiving political attention, remains a stigmatized area. In this case, Whiley and his colleagues theorize that workplace menopause is problematized and pathologized in a male-dominated work environment. They then go on to hypothesize that women experience this as perceiving themselves to be physically, emotionally, morally and socially contaminated, and use the term «dirty femininity» to describe attitudes towards menopause in a patriarchal society (If I’m starting to lose some of (you guys, stay with me, this is going somewhere and it’s not just a feminist rant).
ET rulings are not commonly considered when we think about jurisprudence in social work practice, but two cases are particularly relevant and worthy of some consideration in this discussion. This is a Scottish case from 2023 (Mrs K Anderson v Thistle Marine Ltd, 2023) and a 2021 appeal case (Mrs M Rooney v Leicester City Council, 2021), which explored the claim that menopause is, or should be, a protected characteristic.
Methods
Based on the research work, the researchers present the findings and analysis of a qualitative study using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methods.
For those wondering what IPA is, it is a method of psychological research that seeks to understand the experience of individuals and examine how they make sense of it. In many ways, this type of approach fits well with social work, as it is based on the contextual nature of a person’s individual and social life and generally includes small sample sizes, with 6-10 participants being ideally recommended ( Smith & Nizza, 2022; Smith et al, 2021).
IPA is “especially suited to ‘complex, ambiguous, and emotionally charged’ phenomena” (Smith & Osbourne, 2014; cited p.6).
In this study, the experiences of six women with lived experience during menopause were recruited using “snowball” techniques (think recruiting refer-a-friend type samples). As with the limited number of other studies, and as discussed in yesterday’s blog, the participants in this sample were all white, cisgender women, employed, and all mothers. They all lived in the same economic zone of the United Kingdom and held jobs in office or service contexts. Diversity and intersectionality are highlighted as an area for future research, but the study itself does not attempt to explore these issues further.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted, with an interview guide and prompts for the interviewers to follow, allowing the participant to direct the discussion within a set of predefined boundaries. All participants were invited to a pre-interview debriefing session to counteract potential interview anxiety, and care was taken to ensure that participants’ consent was informed. Each interview was recorded and transcribed as part of the process of identifying themes in the experiences, including reviewing recordings and noting emotional inflections. The team of four researchers read and compared themes through an iterative discussion that was recorded and “fine-tuned” into a theoretical map that reflected the participants’ accounts and the researchers’ interpretations of those accounts.
Results
The researchers identified several common themes in the participants’ experience and attitudes/beliefs toward their own menopause experiences. The article identifies some of the main themes (e.g. uncontrolled emotions and feeling inadequate at work, particularly with younger colleagues); However, the article focuses on some of the secondary or subordinate themes, which include the impact of what they call «dirty femininity», that is, the physical experiences (hot flashes, sweats, etc.), the moral experience (being seen as ‘less than a woman’ because you are no longer fertile) and social experience (being a taboo subject in the workplace).
Conclusions
Although framed within a feminist political ideology, the article’s findings suggest that women who experience menopausal symptoms commonly feel isolated and excluded. In male-dominated workplaces, such as those experienced by this sample group, they felt disadvantaged and felt that their colleagues viewed them differently as they aged. According to the researchers, the evidence illustrates the “stigmatizing effect of menopause at work.” The article concludes that the study expands the understanding of women’s lived experiences during menopause at work as an example of gendered complex aging.
Research findings form part of the social work toolkit, along with theory, legislation, guidance and jurisprudence.
Returning briefly to the ET cases at this point, the findings in both cases sought to categorize menopause as a protected characteristic, one focused on sex and the other sought to define the symptoms as a disability.
In the 2021 case, Ms Rooney, a social worker employed by a large local authority, successfully argued that she had a disability and that this was due to menopause symptoms combined with symptoms of stress and anxiety.
«Employers must support their employees affected by menopause and may have a duty to make reasonable adjustments where the symptoms of menopause are significant and they may have a disability» (Human Rights Commission, 2023)
In the most recent judgment in 2023, Ms Anderson, an office manager working in the private sector, successfully argued unfair dismissal on the basis of section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. It was accepted that references to menopause in a work environment could amount to harassment. due to sex since it is a condition that only affects women. The court agreed.
Strengths and limitations
The researchers in this study were clear about both their research question and the methods they chose to use to answer it, and the methods they used are documented and described (with data available if anyone wants to check how it works). They detail the rationale for their decisions and choices, with an emphasis on their lived experience being aligned with the principles of the identified research approach, and while the article is steeped in feminist ideology (which may put some off), that does not mean that He has nothing to say or contribute. The focus on exclusion is a topic we started yesterday and, while we are connected, this paper focuses on women in two employment sectors and doesn’t really consider broader diversity factors in detail, making it difficult to generalize the findings.
Researchers are largely theorizing, but they are doing so with data from lived experiences, which means there is depth to the discussion. An attempt is made to reduce bias by following a structured methodology to make sense of the information (an approach that reflects what a social worker does in the context of an in-depth assessment).
Data from lived experiences provides depth to themes and discussions.
Implications for Practice
As an aging, female-dominated workforce, these are real issues for many, and the experiences of feeling «contaminated» and «inadequate» described in the Whiley et al study, although perhaps articulated or expressed differently in settings of social care, are very real for a large number of people. significant proportion of the workforce; Ms Rooney’s ET ruling is just one example.
What has been interesting in examining the articles on menopause this week is the lack of literature in the disciplines of social care and social work. The evidence base is patchy at best and, as highlighted in Wednesday’s blog, the types of interventions that could help in the work environment and beyond, and the broader conversations that need to take place about menopause and the impact it can have on well-being are long overdue and long overdue!
Conflicts of interest
None
Links:
Primary job:
Whiley, L.A., Wright, A., Stutterheim, S.E. and Grandy, G. (2023) “A part of being a woman, really”: Menopause in action as “dirty” femininity.» Gender, Work and Organization30 (3), 897-916.
Other links:
Human Rights Commission (2023)”The equality watchdog is supporting a major Tribunal hearing into alleged menopause discrimination.» [Online]
Mrs K Anderson (or Farquharson) v Thistle Marine (Peterhead) Ltd and JD Clark: 4101775/2023
Smith, J.A., Flowers, P., & Larking, M (2021) Interpretive phenomenological analysis: theory, method and researchLondon: wise
Smith, J. A. and Nizza, I. E. (2022). What is interpretive phenomenological analysis? In JA Smith and IE Nizza, Foundations of interpretative phenomenological analysis (pp. 3 to 10). American Psychological Association.
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