The article discusses the challenges faced by women in their late 40s and 50s in the Indian job market, highlighting ageism exacerbated by menopause. It depicts the author's personal experiences of job hunting and facing pay cuts, revealing how women often feel devalued and disposable in the workforce. The concept of "menopenalisation" is introduced to describe how age-related biases particularly affect older women around menopause age. With the percentage of women in senior leadership roles stagnant, there are calls for better data on workforce retention among older women in India, highlighting this critical issue for gender equality.
If I had known that my shelf life ended when I turned 45, I would have been more amenable and taken up one of those jobs that devalued me even further.
There is a need to look at the gender aspect of the age penalty because for women, ageism coincides with their menopause.
Over the past five years, I have worked in teams where my colleagues were a decade younger or more. So where did all the women of my age go?
In India, menopause typically begins about age 47, earlier than the global average of 51, the age a working woman would typically be in middle or senior leadership.
Collection
[
|
...
]