“If I take another pay cut, I might as well start working pro bono,” I joked with a friend recently, during another brutal round of job hunting in my home city, Delhi. She, in her early 40s, laughed but said: “I feel the same.”
In my last full-time role, I took a 50% pay cut – the alternative was to lose the job. I accepted while thinking I would soon dazzle them into raising my salary. I forgot one crucial factor – as a 48-year-old woman, I was as replaceable as the swivel chair at my desk.
There is a need to look at the gender aspect of the age penalty – because for women, ageism coincides with their menopause. It is what I call a “menopenalisation”. Many, like me, who have managed to make it through the marriage penalty and the child penalty, are now caught in the age penalty – right when we are also struggling with menopausal blues.
Physical and emotional symptoms such as hot flushes, brain fog or anxiety are being used to dismiss women as less capable during this phase of life.
There is little doubt that many women in their late 40s or early 50s – prime years for leadership – are leaving the workforce because of menopenalisation.
According to a report by LinkedIn and the Quantum Hub, the percentage of women in senior leadership roles in India was 18.3% last year.
A 2022 survey of American women aged 40 to 55 found that nearly a third had considered switching from full-time to part-time work, and 22% were considering taking early retirement. Another survey from the UK showed that 18% of women going through menopause were thinking about quitting altogether.
I have been in perimenopause for a few years now. And yes, I struggle with various symptoms.
But it has not taken away my skills and my productivity. I am at my creative peak – I wrote two books while in perimenopause, and another two are slated for next year. I recently launched a website called Wednesday, a one-stop destination for information on various aspects of women’s lives.
I have done this while feeling oddly unwell some days, with inexplicable aches and pains, and sudden brain fogs. I am still here and still productive, but I am apparently unhirable.
We need policies that protect older women in the workforce, and leadership pipelines that do not just look like boys’ clubs with a token woman thrown in. We need workplaces that are sensitive to women’s needs at various stages of their reproductive lives. Above all, we need to stop allowing ourselves to be exploited for being experienced, knowledgable and, yes, older.
Nilanjana Bhowmick is a writer based in Delhi, India. Main photograph by Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images. Read the full article here
