Getting Hired as a Woman Over 40 Just Got Even Harder

We have The New York Times to thank for that.

Dear The New York Times,

I just got around to reading your Study Shows the Staggering Cost of Menopause for Women in the Work Force* article.

I’m not impressed.

And I have a couple of questions…

Question one: Do you know how hard it is for a woman over 40 to get hired?

Especially in tech? You probably don’t, but I sure as shit do.

When I got laid off in 2018, I wasn’t too concerned. I’d never had a hard time finding a job before. But this time, things were different. I was older.

I went through 14 (yes, 14!!) failed interview loops over five excruciating months before finally getting an offer — from, you guessed it, a woman over 40.

To this day, I’ve never gotten an offer from a loop that didn’t contain at least one person over 40.

Representation matters.

But you know what else matters? Public opinion. Even with all the diversity and inclusion training we get at work, menopause still remains an outlier, a topic almost never mentioned in mixed company.

So when I saw you, The New York Times, running an article about the cost of menopause in the workplace, I was excited.

Until I read the article.

You let your vast readership know that the cost of menopause in the workplace is really high.

Like, $1.8 billion high! We working women aged 45 to 60 — lamentable with our hot flashes and night sweats and mood swings and brain fog, all detailed in your piece — are costing businesses cold hard cash, and you brought the data points to substantiate these claims.

Fifteen percent of those studied said they’d missed work because of their menopause symptoms. A little over 1% said they quit or were laid off due to “debilitating” symptoms.

The article went on and on with the misery and the costs and then ended with this doozy of a quote from a woman who left her job as a result of her menopausal symptoms:

“I thought it would be better to leave than be fired,” she said. “It’s horrible that we — as women — have to work through this craziness. I routinely feel bad for us.”

This is the narrative arc The New York Times gives the five million working women between 45–60? We have awful symptoms, we miss work, we cost companies bazillions of dollars, so it’s better to leave than be fired?

I can’t even.

And by that, I mean, I can’t even contemplate the harm your article has done for women like me in the workplace. It’s not only with hiring. Older women face microaggressions all the time, and the bias is that we’re not mentally sharp enough to perform.

Now you’re using your platform to blast a list of physical and cognitive impairments and you conclude with…we should sulk away and quit? Without mentioning that maybe, possibly, women have the option of treatment — that works?

How. Dare. You.

Question two: Are you aware hormone replacement therapy exists, is effective, and is recommended for the majority of women in the age group studied?

I came of age afraid of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a result of a Women’s Health Initiative study in 2002 that proclaimed HRT increased risks of breast cancer, blood clots, heart disease, and stroke.

Did you know that as a result of this study — now largely debunked — a generation of women effectively had no treatment for the symptoms described in your article?

The wisdom of time and further tests have opened the doors for HRT for GenX women as we age into menopause, and I’m grateful.

The 2022 hormone therapy position statement of The North American Menopause Society is non-ambiguous in its support of HRT, within parameters:

“For women aged younger than 60 years or who are within 10 years of menopause onset and have no contraindications, the benefit-risk ratio is favorable for treatment of bothersome VMS and prevention of bone loss.”

Many doctors haven’t kept up with the latest, so the burden falls to women to prove — or beg — their way into a prescription.

Apparently, dear New York Times, you also missed the memo.

So it’s up to women once again to point out the gaping hole in your research and to ask: How did the trajectory of your article not lead the narrative to women who’ve successfully taken HRT to alleviate their symptoms? I assure you, these women exist.

I’m one of them.

My perimenopause** symptoms have a somewhat atypical presentation. I don’t get hot flashes and my sex drive hasn’t cratered.

Instead, I have inflammation, dizziness, and brain fog. I’ve grown insensitive to loads of inconvenient foods, and for awhile I could manage my hormonal symptoms with dietary changes.

Until I couldn’t.

Then I turned to my naturopath, who specializes in women’s health and menopause.

I told her how my bones felt too heavy for my body, my joints ached constantly, and the brain fog was murkier than I could manage. Thankfully I had no contraindications, and I left her office with a prescription for an Estriol patch and Progesterone.

The effect was almost immediate — like night and day. I felt like me again.

And know what else, New York Times? I’m killing it at work. Perhaps you could’ve found a few women like me to feature in your article, women who were faced with symptoms, learned how to manage them, and could still work and function — like so many humans do?

If you’d like to run a follow-up story of women navigating menopause successfully, I’d be happy to chat.

Your disgruntled reader and subscriber,

Dana

*I used a gift link, so hopefully you can read it even if you’re not a paid subscriber.

• *Medium marks “perimenopause” as a typo and somehow that just seems apt for this article, doesn’t it?

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