The stresses of the menopause and caring for elderly parents should be as important to employers as pregnancy, a Bafta-winning leading broadcaster has said.
Dorothy Byrne, the head of news and current affairs at Channel Four, will this weekend by given a Scottish Bafta for an Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting.
Byrne, born in Paisley, said that although overt sexism is not as prevalent in the media as it was when she began her career, the issue of the menopause is hardly ever talked about and affects women in work deeply.
She said she was deeply affected by menopause, caring for elderly parents and the stresses of teenage children taking important exams.
Byrne known for her work as Commissioning Editor for Dispatches and overseeing Unreported World and Channel 4 News, and she spent many years making key films for World in Action.
During her time editing Dispatches the programme won multiple BAFTAs, while Byrne has won the Women in Film and Television award for Best Woman in Factual Television and was made a Fellow of The Royal Television Society.
She says employers just do not want to do talk about, or adjust for, the menopause and the stresses felt by older women.
She said because of this experienced women at the height of their careers can be lost to the workforce.
Byrne said: "There is one big area that needs to be spoken about that that is women get older, and the pressures they come under.
"Not all women suffer but some do, but employers do want to take it into account, and the women just leave.
"[The menopause] often coincides with children doing A-Levels and elderly parents - I had all those issues.
"Just as now we all take into account when women have children, there are a lot of issues for women at the other end - there is sometimes an enormous burden but employers don't want to talk about it.
"Sexism is still there to a certain extent but it has improved, but there are other issues where we have a way to go."
Ms Byrne said she thinks sexism and tolerance of sexual abuse in the media has improved in recent years.
She said in her first week of work at Granada she was sexually assaulted by a TV director, who put his hand on her leg.
Byrne had been told before she worked with the director that he assaulted women.
"He slid it up my leg and I put it right back to him," she said.
"But imagine how disempowered I felt in that situation - I had even been warned before hand that he was going to do this, but the sense was: I knew it was going to happen, so how could I complain?
"If you ask any women who has worked in the media in the last 30 years there will have been sexual assaults, being groped by men. Naked men turning up at your hotel door.
"But I think the acceptance of that has gone to a large extent and won't happen now."
Ms Byrne said that times have changed - she remembered pitching ideas for films for World in Action, and was told the issue of rape in marriage was "not a story" by senior male colleagues.
She also said a story about how parents were worried about children walking by themselves to school proved to be a controversial subject for her colleagues.
"For them, proper stories were the CIA or nuclear power, not children going to school" she said.
"Not all men were like that...but the programme rated really well."
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