The Gender Code In Menopause with Danielle Dobson
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Danielle is an author, coach and powerful speaker. With 20 plus years across five countries, Danielle has grasped the essence of building inclusive workplaces understanding that belonging is pivotal for success. In this article, Danielle talks about her book “Breaking The Gender Code”, how the code plays into menopause, and what we need to do about it.
The Challenge for Women, at Home and as Leaders
Why can’t women find the time they need to look after their own health and wellbeing?
Having worked all over the world in the finance sector as an accountant and analyst, as a personal trainer and now as a coach, I work with mostly women - smart, hardworking women - who struggle to prioritise their health and wellbeing. As someone who has always managed to do my exercise, eat well, and take time for myself, I initially didn't understand these challenges - but I was very curious and ultimately, researched and wrote a book on this topic.
What I find really interesting is that, no matter where you live, or what you do for work, women everywhere are struggling with this. They are women working in embassies, hospitals,, accounting firms, mining and petrochemical companies, government departments, media and entertainment organisations and other businesses across the spectrum. They are also stay-at-home mothers with children and carers looking after the unique needs of others.
Most women say that money, time, and support are the main reasons why they don’t have enough time for themselves and consequently, their own wellbeing. But even when I lived in Beijing, where everyone had helpers and enough money, the women I associated with were still struggling.
I wanted to know more, and started a two-year research project to investigate what was really going on. I wanted to understand what was behind this huge challenge, what was really holding women back and what could I do about it. In addition to getting to the heart of the problem, I also focused on what was working well for leaders at work, and what was working well for stay at home parents and carers. I interviewed over 100 people across a range of industries and professions then drew on neuroscience, history, social research and personal experimentation.
Introducing the Gender Code
What I uncovered in my research was fascinating. I realised that we all operate under a code, the Gender Code. The gender code, a set of default beliefs that create stereotypes that keep the genders firmly in different boxes.
It's like a societal algorithm.
And it's deeply embedded into our culture. And we don't even question these beliefs, even when they create real problems for leaders, their teams, their businesses, and our relationships.
According to the gender code, we are pigeonholed into either a blue or pink box.
And there's
a training program
expectations,
a set of rules that go with each of the boxes,
We’re either punished or rewarded based on how well we conform.
In the blue box, we have people who are leaders, providers and hunters.
And in the pink box, we have people who are nurturers, carers, gatherers and supporters of people in the blue box.
And the Gender Code doesn't even consider people who sit outside the pink and blue box.
The Gender Code sets high expectations and increases pressures to perform. Pressures like perfectionism, busyness, mental load, hypermasculinity, balance pressure, self-care pressure. This is really what is at the core of our challenges in terms of looking after our own health, wellbeing, and also, stepping into leadership roles, speaking up for ourselves, being heard and taking charge of our lives.
A lot of this ‘training program’ is instilled through our family systems and how we were raised. For example, if we come across a little girl, what's the first thing we might want to say to her? It’s often something like, “Look at your pretty hair, I love your dress, things like that. In contrast, I noticed when raising my boys, people had a very different set of questions, like “Oh, what a great car you have there. You are growing up big and strong…”. The way we greet young girls or boys with positivity around those different areas starts reinforcing their worth around those things from that very early stage.
As we grow up we keep wanting that praise, that sense of worth and dopamine hits, so that's where we invest our energy and attention. I came across this study by Westpac that showed that boys are typically paid more pocket money, with outside work valued and paid more highly than inside work. It's all of these sorts of things that explain why we're valuing typical men's work and typical women's work differently.
Our Gender Code supports rules that are outdated. Women are now doing paid work in addition to domestic and emotional work - and there is a huge support gap.
The Gender Code at Work
How does this play out in the workplace?
Increasingly, the people in the pink boxes are also providing, leading and hunting. While still supporting everyone else.
Because the training program expectations supports rules, everything to go with the blue box isn't set up to support people in the pink box.
The result is a support gap. Unpaid, undervalued and invisible work.
Pink box people are essentially working a triple shift.
They're doing paid work, domestic work, and emotional work - and that's where it's costly.
It’s no wonder we are seeing increases in chronic illness, fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout - and that's what really drives me to do the work that I do. Women need more support to fulfil multiple roles, and at the same time, reprogram the way they think and what they expect of themselves. Women and the people who support them need to understand the importance of investing in wellbeing, but also, letting go of a lot of other things. We desperately need education and to shine the spotlight on these gaps and challenges.
The Gender Code in Menopause
Data shows that gender pay gaps are greatest in age groups that correlate with the perimenopause and menopause years.
If we look at data from the Workplace Gender Equality agency, who collect data from organisations that have 100 employees, or more, they report on six different gender metrics every year.
In 2021, they decided to collect data based on age to explore the gender pay gap across age groups. This was a voluntary exercise, but 70% of organisations contributed (around 3 million Australian workers).
They found that the gender pay gap increases as people get older, from around 2.5% difference for 24 year olds, then 30.2% for people aged 45, 50 to 54 then peaks at 32% for people aged 55 to 65. The gap decreases after that.
When I saw those figures, I realised they represent the perimenopause and menopause stages of women's lives. It really got my attention so I started looking into this more, and realised that it is an age group issue.
We are seeing, across a range of different resources and research, that women are opting out of the workforce at a time when they have peak cultural knowledge, skills, relationships and experience that would allow them to really step into those leadership roles.
How can they do that if they are struggling with ageing parents, children, and then the overlay of at least one severe perimenopause or menopause symptom that affects their work? Without the right support or focus on health and wellbeing, a woman starts to lose confidence, efficacy and self-belief.
This is borne out in recent studies that outline how women are bypassing promotions and leadership roles at this transitional time of life. There’s simply too much going on which reduces capacity,confidence and energy levels. Without the right support and conversation as I mentioned earlier, workplaces will continue to lose these precious resources and women’s health will suffer.
We need to do better.
The Way Forward
My research has uncovered some really interesting facts and these outline how we can make this transition easier, help women to support themselves, and provide them with the right support and opportunities at work, going forward.
Firstly, I’ve discovered that the critical skills of leadership are actually built in your role as a parent or carer. Women leaders are able to use those strengths to move forward into leadership roles, and we need to support women to discover and apply those same strengths to their own wellbeing, so they can stay well and at work.
I’m also really pleased to see that there is a growing focus on, and momentum toward, supporting women at work. The organisations who are leading the way are those that already have other wellbeing policies, programs and practices in place, and an overall wellbeing strategy. They’re more successful at supporting women through perimenopause and menopause, because they've got the right foundations including the physical and financial investment in related initiatives. If they've started the conversation around the ‘ageing workforce’, it’s even better because they’re not isolating any group.
There are really three key parts we have to look at, if we want to change things.
There's the individual, with education being essential to creating their awareness of what’s going on so they can do something about it.
And if there's anything that I've learned from coaching women in organisations, I know that there must be organisational change. You can invest so much in an individual, but if you put them back in a dirty fish tank, then they're not going to be able to swim very well and they'll hardly survive. So it's the individual but it's really the culture, where it’s ok to discuss things that have previously been ignored or stigmatised.
Finally, we might say our menopause only affects people with ovaries, but it actually affects everyone they work with, who they have a relationship with, and the whole organisation. Everyone needs to be a part of the conversation, support for and normalising menopause.
When we do that, we get the benefit of people who are thriving, contributing their valuable skills, knowledge and wisdom to a business, a workplace, a family, their friends and community.
When women are well, everyone benefits on some level.
References
Dobson, D. (2020) Breaking the Gender Code, Publish Central
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