AS someone who suffers unduly from the cold, the prospect of hot flushes held no terrors. I expected when the mid-life thermostat cranked into gear there’d finally be no need for a hot water bottle. I wasn’t wrong about that, but what I had not foreseen were the guerilla tactics the menopause deploys. Like Kato in The Pink Panther, it launches its attacks when you are least able to cope.

In my case this was not in the ridiculously overheated office – layering took care of that – but on the bus and train commute. In a crowded carriage, or jammed like toothpicks while clutching a strap, it is hard to take off your jacket let alone peel the onion skins of garments beneath. Usually it was at this point that, sensing rising panic, the inner furnace switched on.

It’s hard to describe the raging heat hormones can create. Like a Lamborgini, you go from nought to 90 in seconds. Glasses fog, make-up melts, and your shirt feels as if it’s been through a tropical downpour. By the time I reached the office I felt wrung out, and the day had not even begun. In comparison with many women, however, I got off lightly.

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One of the most disabling aspects of the menopause is the lack of confidence it brings. At the point at which professionals are approaching the peak of their careers, they are sabotaged by their bodies. Every day is a gamble, not knowing if they will be ambushed in mid-meeting or public appearance. The fear of humiliation if you get flustered or forgetful or lose your cool is unnerving. No longer being able to trust yourself to sail through things is profoundly unsettling. Some days I felt as if I had been chemically remixed. I barely recognised the face in the mirror.

While some women are severely compromised, and their symptoms last for years, others don’t find it an ordeal. Yet I have never met anyone who was not in some way affected, and was glad when they emerged on the other side.

Overheating is the joke-book shorthand for this phase of life. But, thanks to campaigners such as the Countess of Wessex, there is better appreciation of the slew of side effects. These range from lack of sleep, anxiety and mood swings to anaemia and memory loss.

Disturbing official figures for the UK indicate just how seriously it can impede people’s ability to concentrate, or cope with work. According to these statistics, around one million retire prematurely. Andy Briggs, the government’s business champion for older workers, has said that “one in five women end up leaving the workplace as a result of some of the symptoms of menopause... Six out of ten women tell us that the menopause has a significant impact on them from a work perspective and yet it’s just never talked about.”

The invisibility of older women in society is glaring; or at least it would be if it were not so hard to spot. As men enter their distinguished years, they are rewarded with respect for their vintage. Women, instead, are “grannified”, their main role assumed to be domestic. It doesn’t matter if you still run marathons in your fifties or are a High Court judge. In the eyes of the world you are no longer youthful, and therefore fade into the background. If you can possibly find a scrapheap to climb onto, all the better for everyone.

Because the impact of the menopause is deeply personal, both physically and mentally, many women find it embarrassing to talk about with their employer. For me, the idea of raising hormonal woes with a boss would have been unthinkable. How to have that conversation without setting off the sprinkler system? Perhaps more worryingly, it would also have felt like an admission of defeat.

And clearly, that is how many sufferers perceive it, which is why they stay quiet. Yet proof that millions pack in work early as a result is a scandal and a calamity. At the very time that women of a certain age are likely to have elderly parents needing support, not to mention children and grandchildren, they have also to handle the haywire hormones that make performing at full capacity harder than ever before in their careers. What they need is not their P45 but wrap-around support.

Employers are better educated now in the flexibility required for parents, or those with additional caring responsibilities. Yet for worker and employer alike, broaching the topic of the menopause is like asking a Trappist monk to break a vow of silence. As with childbirth, women are simply expected to get through it without a fuss.

Andy Briggs highlighted the pension deficit facing those who retire in their fifties, as well as the knock-on this has for tax revenue. Both are important issues. Equally crucial, however, is the loss of mature women from the working arena. Whether it’s in high-powered professions or less skilled employment, this generation is a priceless asset.

It goes without saying that their contribution to the economy is crucial. But their value goes far deeper than that. For a start, their presence has a steadying effect on the rest of the staff, tangible evidence that this is three-dimensional environment, not one devoted solely to the careers and concerns of the young.

These women can be stern or they can be motherly, but thanks to their knowledge and age, they act as guy ropes on the whole endeavour. Their years of experience and hard-earned wisdom tether the collective tent. The same can, of course, be said of their male peers, but their influence is expressed differently. Nor does an aspirational thirty-something man require older male colleagues to show him how far he could go. Younger women, on the other hand, badly need female role models lighting the road ahead.

How to solve the problem of women retiring too soon because of menopausal distress won’t be a simple matter. It requires imagination and commitment to make work a comfortable and accommodating place for those who are finding things hard. But, whether it’s a shop floor, stock broker’s or surgical ward, there has to be a way to show such women how much they matter, and find a way to take the heat off them.

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