UK can't play the menopause card

and... dementia

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Midlife women in the UK are very riled up right now, after the government decided not to make menopause “a protected characteristic”.

For analysis, I’m going to turn this over to the extremely reasonable and very credible Rachel Lankester, founder of Magnificent Midlife, who breaks it down better than I ever could.

There have been a lot of indignant women in the UK this week. The government rejected suggestions from the Women and Equalities Committee, including to introduce 'menopause leave' and make menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

A lot of women feel very let down and I get that.

The wording used for rejecting menopause as a protected characteristic was unfortunate. The government said such a move could have "unintended consequences which may inadvertently create new forms of discrimination, for example, discrimination risks towards men suffering from long term medical conditions or eroding existing protections."

So of course…