Granted, I could be a beneficiary of the latest guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) about women going through the menopause. It advises employers to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for women who experience symptoms such as broken sleep, brain fog and hot flushes (viz, most of us). This includes possibly relaxing uniform requirements, lowering the temperature in the office, providing quiet areas and protecting the menopausal from humorous observations about any of the above from their colleagues. It’s preposterous guidance from a body which has little notion of the realities of a workplace that isn’t publicly funded. These suggestions will end up pathologising the human condition – at least, as it affects half the population.

Being a woman is not a disability nor a pathology

Can you imagine a self-employed hairdresser giving herself a rest room to get over her menopausal symptoms? Me neither. This guidance is going to be yet another of those things which can be merrily exploited in the public sector but which, for a small business, would be quite a good reason to think twice before employing women who might start demanding to work from home because they didn’t sleep properly. If the symptoms of menopause can be considered a disability in terms of the disastrous Equality Act, that’s an awful lot of disability going around: about 11 million people. And I’m not sure this does the properly disabled any favours.

Me, I never can work out whether brain fog and broken sleep is just natural to me in normal circumstances or is actually something to do with what was once euphemistically described as The Change. Certainly I attribute my larger size to the menopause, though it may also have something to do with my eating too much. As for the hot flushes, they are undeniably a pain but they come and go. And they’re unpredictable: can you imagine downing tools midway through the day because you’re feeling one coming on? An older generation simply put up with them, or were that bit rattier at home. And can you even imagine the late Queen opting out of engagements because of it?

The obvious remedy to age-related hormone imbalances is to remind the vanishingly small proportion of the sex that hasn’t already been galvanised by the menopause lobby that there is Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) out there that can help diminish the symptoms. I would however point out that it doesn’t actually cure the thing; the hot flushes won’t go away – they may just be a bit less bad.

Being a woman is not a disability nor a pathology. The late feminist, Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique advanced the optimistic theory that if women were busy and at work rather than loafing around as home-makers, they’d be too occupied to bother about the menopause. She was wrong about that. But at least her assumption that women wouldn’t want to dwell on their condition, but would be keen to get on and work was a sane one. Then again she never thought of women as weaklings or wimps; it seems the EHRC does.