Women are not smaller men: How employers can invest in women - and not just for IWD.

Investing in the workplace to make it fit for purpose for women as well as men.

About five years ago, I went to a conference about women in the workplace. Gregarious creature that I am, I got chatting to the woman sitting next to me. During our conversation, she said (I paraphrase)

‘I’m so fed up with all this noise about menopause policies. It’s just another way to point out that we’re different, it’s another reason for people not to employ us’.

I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and made an appropriately unintelligible noise that could have been dissent or agreement, and turned back to the lecture.

That conversation has stuck with me for a long time. It’s taken me a long time to work out why I thought what she said was right, and why it really should have been wrong.

Here’s the thing. Women are not smaller men. Stay with me - it may seem like an obvious statement, but in many workplaces, that is the standard women are still held to, when you really get underneath the skin of the business: a standard not just for men, but men from times gone by, when it was the norm for men to be the breadwinners and women homemakers who didn’t even enter the workplace, let alone have an expectation that the workplace should be fit for purpose for them, as well as for men.

Women are not smaller men. From anywhere between 10 and 15 years old, we start menstruating. Every month, most of us go through a hormonal cycle that can take us through a whole spectrum of physical and emotional changes culminating in a period (pardon the pun) where we shed our womb lining for anything from a few days to over a week.

Part of this cycle is fantastic: we feel great, we look great, we can take on the world - female athletes can actually improve their PBs by being clever about attempting new records at certain points in their cycle. Part of it can be anything from mildly annoying to downright hideous - bad skin, uncomfortable bloating, (extremely) low mood, rage, debilitating back and stomach pain, not to mention the unmentionable: bleeding, which can sometimes be so heavy that we risk bleeding through our period protection and through our clothes (yup, this has happened to me). This, by the way, is a list of symptoms of ‘normal’ periods – I haven’t experienced the horrors of conditions like endometriosis, or polycystic ovaries but I have friends who have and the impact can be profound.

Many workplaces make absolutely zero accommodation for the menstrual cycle - which is nuts, when you think about it, given that the same workplaces probably employ at least 50% women. Not every woman will find dealing with their periods tough - but for those of us that do, it would be wonderful if menstruation wasn’t seen as some kind of ‘special female weakness’, never to be talked about, but instead a situation that impacts half of the workforce on a monthly basis and sometimes requires accommodation to create a level playing field - accommodation that is quietly and compassionately put in place by employers and normalises the female experience, rather than perpetuating a taboo.

Women are not smaller men. Some of us carry and give birth to children. Some women sail through pregnancy, others struggle, some with horrendous conditions like hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness that leads to severe dehydration and is treated with hospitalisation for administration of fluids intravenously) and some, like me, with constant tiredness, low level morning sickness, insomnia, undiagnosed gestational diabetes (I ate my way through my first pregnancy to combat the morning sickness - I don’t recommend that strategy, given that the outcome was diabetes)… often whilst working 10-12 hour days in a bid to demonstrate that they are still valuable members of the workforce despite their pregnancy (also me - no wonder I found being pregnant hard!).

Because workplaces are often set up in a way that is geared solely towards the needs of men, pregnancy still appears to be seen by many employers as an anomaly - something outside the norm that is at best an inconvenience and at worst a sackable offence. To all those employers, I have this to say.  WAKE UP!!!  Women are over 50% of the working population, and many women give birth to children. Build this into your business plan, like you would any other probable occurrence. And while you are doing that, please stop being so short-termist about maternity leave and the needs of women (and parents generally) on the return from maternity or parental leave for flexibility for a few short years - given the length of time that we will all be workforce members, the childbearing and young childcare years are a fraction of someone’s total working life. After all (here’s a shocker) if you treat people well when they need accommodation and support (flexible working to deal with pregnancy related ill health or childcare, properly paid maternity or parental leave) the likelihood is that in most cases they will reward you with loyalty and hard work and you will retain their talent for longer.

Women are not smaller men. In our forties and fifties (and sometimes much earlier) we go through a life changing transition known as the peri-menopause and the menopause. As with pregnancy and periods, not everyone has the same experience - some of us fly through it (just ask my Mum!) and some of us (me again) are currently ‘enjoying’ the rollercoaster ride of hormonal changes, anxiety, insomnia, weight gain, rage (again), brain fog and memory loss, erratic periods, hot flushes and night sweats (whilst also becoming more susceptible to cold – how does that work?) … the list goes on. And the peri-menopause goes on as well, sometimes for over a decade: super fun trying to manage all of those symptoms in a workplace that was designed for people who don’t experience the menopause, and so don’t need any help with or accommodations for those kind of symptoms.

This is where one of my LinkedIn contacts (let’s call him Alan, largely because that’s his name), will likely chip in with some kind of supportive comment about women not even wanting to work at all ‘with all this leave’. And that’s the thing, and that’s what I wish I had been able to articulate five years ago when my new acquaintance made her comment about menopause policies- this is not about women wanting an easy ride. We’re not actually asking for anything unreasonable, or unattainable.  This is simply about women sometimes needing different things to men in order for them to have a comfortable, inclusive environment to work in, and workplaces providing for those needs with the minimum of fuss, and without making women feel bad because they are not smaller men.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is Investing in Women (I’m ignoring that other nonsense about inspire inclusion, it’s so woolly).  Instead of lots of lovely performative posts on LinkedIn, and marketing content, and pretty pictures, please show us the tangible action, and really what I mean here is SHOW US THE MONEY! The constructs, systems and structures that exist in most modern workplaces are often not fit for purpose for women, and yet there are a myriad of ways for businesses to invest in their female staff, some low cost and easily achievable, some higher cost and needing more work.  Here are some examples:

Periods:

• Train your managers about the impact periods can have for some women in the workplace.  I like to think that we are past the days of muttered comments about someone being ‘on the blob’ or ‘having the painters in’ (although I suspect we are not past this in every workplace) but let’s go beyond this and normalise women’s experience.
• Maybe include in that training information about  allowing for different performance levels, and different energy at different times from different women, to accommodate where they are in their cycle. Allow women to manage this for themselves as much as you can by giving them autonomy to decide how they perform their role wherever possible.
• Accept that it might be easier for women to work from home at certain points in their cycle, for example, if they are bleeding heavily, and don’t make this kind of flexibility a big deal.
• Have periodware in your toilets as a matter of course - including in any toilets that might be used by people who menstruate who are not women (which is a good time to flag that although this article is about women, much of this will also apply to trans and non-binary people who menstruate). Even better, include things like heat packs to help if someone is in discomfort whilst physically present in the workplace.

Pregnancy and parenthood:

• Train your managers on how to approach the needs of pregnant women with kindness and compassion and how to properly plan for a team member to be out on leave for an extended period.  This does not include statements like ‘well, the rest of the team will just have to carry your work’ – unsurprisingly, this does not make pregnant women feel included, it makes them feel like a burden or a problem to be solved, and it has a knock on impact on how other team members view the person who is going to be on leave.
• Be open about your maternity and parental leave offering, including to candidates who are not yet part of your business – don’t make finding this information out difficult or exposing, it’s reasonable for people to want to plan.
• Get to grips with flexible working - properly - and change the narrative to view it as the norm or even (dare I say it?  I do dare!) a positive for your business. Global businesses in particular need employees to be flexible to meet customer need - how about treating employee need in the same way and maybe even matching the two up whenever you can?
• Don’t be short-termist in how you view pregnancy, family leave, and the needs of parents with small children. It doesn’t last forever, and if you get the support right you will engender loyalty and retain talent.
• Budget for the unchanging biological fact that women carry children and some women in your business will have children. Build a maternity chest of your own so that this doesn’t cause your business financial hardship – it’s just another business ‘risk’ that you can plan and ensure you are ready for (and that applies to all sizes of business).
• If your business has the resources, look into offering affordable, high quality childcare for your employees’ kids. If you can’t afford to do that all the time, what about partnering with a Nanny service that will allow cover when kids are ill and home from nursery? That said, sometimes, the best thing for kids is to be with their parents, and parents of young kids will need to take time off, and they will worry about it incessantly (or in my case, they will semi-bankrupt themselves paying for expensive babysitters and still feel guilty about it over a decade later) so some reassurance that you understand that this is a short term issue, and some support to ensure they stay on top of their work would also be a nice touch.
• Acknowledge that returning to the workplace after extended leave can be daunting – stay in touch with your employees whilst they are on maternity or parental leave, let them know that they are valued and then demonstrate that with actions by putting in place a great return to work experience for them.  It doesn’t take long to get back up to speed with the proper support – but when you can’t even remember how Outlook works after a year out looking after babies (me again!) coming back and ‘just getting on with it’ is pretty terrifying and not necessarily the best set up for personal or business success.

Menopause:

• Can you guess? Yes, that’s right, train your managers about the menopause, its possible symptoms and its impact on women.
• Flexibility again - be as flexible as you can so that it’s not a big deal if a woman chooses to work from home to better manage her work and her menopausal symptoms, or arranges her hours differently, for example, because she woke up at 3am and needs to take a nap mid afternoon to get through the day.
• Think about a menopause ERG, and with or without this, provide access to resources to help your female staff navigate this transition.

I wonder, have you noticed something about these suggestions?  Have you noticed that most of them, if implemented, would probably make life easier for men, too? Investing in women can also be about investing in your workforce generally - I’ve stolen this quote before and I will steal it again: a rising tide lifts all boats.

Women don’t want ‘special treatment’ – but we do want a workplace that is fit for use by women, as well as men. This International Women’s Day, please take some tangible action to invest in women, and reap the benefits that will come your way as a result.

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