In recent weeks, the impact of the menopause on women in the workplace has been given a rare, but crucial, spotlight.

With symptoms ranging from hot flushes, fatigue and memory loss to depression and anxiety, the menopause can have a big effect on both comfort and performance at work and, for a quarter of women, symptoms can be severely debilitating.

In education, this is almost certainly having a big impact given that the majority of those in teaching and leadership roles are female, with UK government data showing 75 per cent of classroom teachers and 67 per cent of headteachers are female.  

And that’s before we even consider female staff in operational and support roles.

After all, if you are a teacher standing in front of a classroom of young people, or a receptionist welcoming visitors, menopausal symptoms are inevitably going to be disruptive to your work life.

Menopause, of course, is not the only health issue impacting women in schools.

Endometriosis, a condition that affects approximately 10 per cent of women but still remains largely under the radar, causes severe pelvic pain and heavy periods and, in addition to physical pain, the challenges the condition causes around getting pregnant can damage mental health too.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is another condition that is seldom talked about although it affects over a quarter of women at childbearing age.

In addition, while miscarriage has risen up the news agenda recently, awareness of its impact still remains relatively low.

All of these issues, and many more, not only impact women’s comfort in the workplace but, in some instances, impact how women are treated and how they are paid.

In more cases than you would imagine, they are forcing women to abandon their careers entirely; a survey by Bupa and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has estimated that almost 900,000 women in the UK have left their jobs due to menopausal symptoms.

Aside from being a recruitment and retention problem for schools, this is an issue of gross inequality.

How schools can help 

So, what can school leaders do to ensure women are supported in all areas of their health and, ultimately, are treated as equals? 

In 2020, ACS International Schools, a group of schools with campuses in the UK and Doha, Qatar, established a series of equality action networks for all staff members to get involved with and start to think about how issues such as these can be tackled with real, meaningful action.

As someone passionate about driving gender equality I volunteered to lead our Gender Equality Network, which is formed of three men and four women from across our campuses.

Over the past year, we’ve been working to evaluate what the key areas affecting gender equality are in our school group and, with many of our workforce being female, we established that having a robust Women’s Health Policy in place was crucial.

However, in trying to develop this policy, we found there was little else we could draw on from other schools and education establishments and therefore we very much relied on the feedback and views of our community to form the basis of the policy points.

To do this, we initially gathered feedback via a shared Google document that we circulated within the Equality Action Networks, then with our school group’s wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council, and then out to further members of staff.

Once we had gathered input from our colleagues, we were able to begin developing the policy and building on it with further feedback, firstly from HR and then the Senior Leadership team.

This process worked well as, in addition to opening up the conversation about women’s health, it ensured that, instead of the policy coming from the top down, it was the creation of the community and reflects genuine needs and wants.

It took around three months to develop the policy from start to finish, but this gave us enough time to ensure we had input from a range of staff and that it was a truly collaborative process.

As the final step, the policy was signed off by the schools’ policy team and we were able to roll it out officially in September 2021.  

So, what were the key things we included? Here are some of the main initiatives now in place:

Responsibilities of line managers

ACS’s Women’s Health Policy highlights that, with the right support, conditions can be much better managed.

Importantly, it outlines the minor adjustments line managers can make to support female employees who are experiencing severe symptoms or issues.

At ACS, managers are responsible for ensuring that no one experiences less favourable treatment as a result of women’s health conditions and the policy ensures they are held accountable for this.

Managers can also put in place agreed adjustments to working environments and patterns to support ongoing conditions and are encouraged to conduct regular check-ins to review and make necessary changes as required. 

Managers are also responsible for taking part in Women’s Health training when provided; Talking Menopause recently ran a session on the menopause for all staff, including line managers, which was incredibly helpful and we received many positive comments from staff about the training.

“I think it is important for line managers and colleagues to understand the issues surrounding this natural and sometimes challenging phase in women’s lives,” said one.

Of course, there are plenty more sessions in the pipeline for the future, which will explore more women’s health issues in depth. Continuous development is key.

Defining flexible working

Flexible working can go a long way in supporting employees suffering from severe symptoms and ACS’s Women’s Health Policy outlines what kind of flexible working can best support women suffering from different conditions.

For example, the policy recognises that the symptoms caused by menstrual conditions and menopausal symptoms can result in disturbed sleep and/or severe pain, and so requests for flexible working could include asking for: a change to the pattern of hours worked; permission to perform work from home; a reduction in working hours; and more frequent breaks.

Employees are asked to discuss such requests with their line manager or HR advisor, and together they will work on both formal and informal flexible working arrangements.

Advice for how both employees and managers can approach conversations around flexible working was included in our menopause training, clearly outlining from the outset what solutions and requests are in line with the policy.

Encouraging conversation

As well as outlining responsibilities for line managers, the policy provides guidance for employees, encouraging them to seek medical advice, be open about symptoms and to contact our Employee Assistance Programme counselling service if they need it.

All conversations are strictly confidential when requested by the employee, and if they have a male line manager but feel more comfortable speaking with a female, they know they can always reach out to a female member of the HR team or a trusted colleague.

Early responses

Although it’s still early days, so far, the greater encouragement to be open about health symptoms provided by the policy has been well received by staff members and we are continually gathering feedback from our community on how to improve and where we can go next.

The fact we have taken the first steps to put a policy in place and move women’s health up the agenda has been appreciated, with many staff writing to the Equality Network to thank us for driving this forward.

We are also hoping to be able to share our policy publically in due course to help other schools who may want to do something similar, to see how we have framed ours and the wording used.

Men’s health next on the agenda

Of course, we recognise men too have areas of their health that impact their experience in the workplace and this is an important next step for us.

We have already run a webinar focusing specifically on men’s health conditions and, to ensure that all members of our community have their needs considered and addressed, we are now working on a Men’s Health Policy which is due to be launched next month and considers issues like prostate cancer and fertility treatment.

Although there is still work to be done and a policy isn’t going to erase employees’ struggles with their health overnight, by giving these issues a voice and outlining clear steps and flexible solutions, schools can make significant improvements for their staff.

The journey will be ongoing, but gender equality in schools is not an unachievable goal.