Vaginal dryness. A drop in libido. Heavy periods. Perhaps not topics you would expect to hear bandied around the staffroom - but that’s exactly what happened when Tes Scotland attended an information session for staff on the menopause at George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh back in 2019.
The session was led by consultant gynaecologist Ailsa Gebbie, who had run a menopause clinic in the capital for 30 years, and came about after modern languages teacher Judith Murphy’s own “overwhelming” perimenopausal symptoms - including crippling fatigue, chronic breast pain and anxiety - led her to wonder if any of her colleagues were going through the same thing.
She sent out a staff survey with the backing of the school’s management but was worried that she had “unleashed some terrible secret”, given that the received wisdom in society seemed to be that women should keep schtum, soldier on and never admit that the menopause could be tough. However, when the responses started to land from colleagues, many of them congratulated her for her bravery in broaching one of the last remaining taboos in education and beyond.
Murphy’s survey established that there was an appetite for support, with 40 staff responding that they would like to raise awareness of the menopause and 40 saying that they would welcome a visit from a specialist to provide information, advice and tips. So, one Wednesday after school, in the middle of the exam period, George Heriot’s held its first menopause event for staff in its almost 400-year history.
Murphy said the menopause had a more significant effect on her than puberty or becoming a mother. It led to her having to make lifestyle adjustments to cope, including taking a six-month break from her nine-year relationship and asking for changes at work.
She used to coach the basketball team after school, but the fatigue, combined with the fear of a heavy bleed as she ran across the court, or the excruciating pain if she was accidentally bumped in the chest, forced her to give it up. Instead, she started to run a more sedate Americana music club at lunchtime.
According to Gebbie, the most common symptoms that women experience are fatigue, hot flushes and sweats - and these are likely to continue for “years, not months”.
She said that work tends to become tougher for those in demanding professions and public-facing roles, where there is no space to let off steam or have a break.
The teachers who spoke to Tes Scotland about their experiences commented on the “highly visible nature of teaching” and the harsh reality that teachers always had to have their “game face on”, which made it a particularly tough career to be in while experiencing menopausal symptoms.
However, despite teaching being a predominantly female profession, teachers reported the menopause was poorly understood in schools. Basics such as having a sufficient number of staff toilets or being able to control the temperature in classrooms were often not in place.
But one of the biggest things schools could do to support women was to encourage “open discussion”, said the EIS teaching union’s education and equality officer, Jenny Kemp.
One teacher in her late forties described the George Heriot’s session as being “as effective as hormone-replacement therapy”.
“We spend our lives at work,” she said. “We need to feel comfortable - events like this are what helps.”
What happened next?
Tes Scotland’s feature about the impact of the menopause on female teachers was published just as the dam was breaking in terms of women feeling able to discuss the sometimes debilitating symptoms they were experiencing.
Around the same time, BBC Breakfast held a menopause-themed week and the Scottish government became the first administration in the UK to hold a debate on the issue.
Now, two years on, the menopause is no longer the taboo subject it once was - and neither are other issues affecting women that had long remained in the shadows. Lights have been shone repeatedly on gender-inequality issues in education workplaces, for example, while period poverty is frequently being addressed in classrooms and in school policies - in 2020, a legal duty was placed on Scottish schools, colleges and universities to provide access to free period products.
However, the extent to which schools have been able to support staff struggling with perimenopausal symptoms such as hot flushes and fatigue has, of course, been affected by the pandemic. Attempts to limit mixing mean that the kind of support groups and open discussion that the EIS’ Jenny Kemp highlighted as being so crucial have largely been scuppered.
In July this year, Judith Murphy - who had left her post at George Heriot’s School and moved to a part-time role - wrote an online article for Tes Scotland about Covid-19 restrictions “leading to workplace isolation”, something she said had further eroded her “fragile self-esteem”.
However, she also spoke about how teaching from home in lockdown had made managing menopausal symptoms easier. Her working day was more flexible which was “a real plus”, given that she continued to suffer from fatigue and restless nights.
These welcome changes have, however, proven to be short lived - not even the pandemic had managed to bring about the more fundamental change that mature female teachers had hoped for, said Murphy.
She called for menopausal women to be given more opportunities to deliver lessons from home; longer breaks to ensure adequate time for personal hygiene; a confidential, trained point of contact to help with anxieties; and the option for secondments away from the school and classrooms.
Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland
