Menopause and the workplace: new directions in HRM research and HR practice

This paper offers two key arguments. The first is that HRM scholars and HR practitioners need to pay a good deal more attention to the bi-directional relationship between menopause and the workplace – how menopausal symptoms can affect women’s experience of work and how work can exacerbate a woman’s symptoms. We outline the social responsibility, demographic, legal and business cases which explain the urgency of more research and more concerted practice in this area. Our second argument concerns the importance of future research and practice adopting an intersectional political economy approach, in order to better understand the considerable differences between how women going through menopause transition experience work. Here we offer arguments ranging from the macro through the meso down to the micro level of these differences, in so doing setting an agenda for the work to come on this very significant issue.