Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Thanks so much for being here today.
I'm a newish member to this committee and a woman of a certain age as well, so I'm really pleased to be talking about this. I remember when my mother went through menopause, and we were really mystified by the symptoms and the changes in her personality. She was a professional nurse, so it was something that affected not only the family life at home but also her work as well. I really appreciate having this discussion.
My first question is for Dr. O'Hearn. I want to talk a bit about what's going on in the workplace. I'm going to reference a statistic from the Menopause Foundation of Canada, which found that 67% of working women would not feel comfortable speaking to a supervisor about menopause symptoms, even though 32% say these symptoms have negatively affected their workplace performance.
We had a witness here last week who talked about what she experienced as an executive woman working in a corporate environment when she was going through menopause. I think the question that arose for me was about workplace culture and what's happening in the workplace, maybe not so much from a policy perspective, because a workplace may have all the policies in place, but in terms of the culture within the workplace that's informing how managers respond and how employees feel about going to their managers.
With that in mind, I'd like to hear a bit about what your research and experience have shown with respect to workplace culture.