Thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you today.
I want to acknowledge that our work at the University of British Columbia and the Women's Health Research Institute is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, and the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for this invitation to speak with you today. Most Canadian women between 25 and 54 are in the paid workforce. That means almost every woman in this country will go through perimenopause and menopause while she is working, yet we have remarkably little data in Canada on what this means for her job, her career and her income. Today, I'll share findings from HER-BC, a study our team at UBC and the Women's Health Research Institute led of more than 2,000 women in British Columbia aged 39 to 60. Our team has published some of the top-line findings from this survey already, including the range and severity of menopause symptoms and the impacts on quality of life and mental health.
In the study, we found that 80% of our sample, which was largely representative of the B.C. population, had at least one menopause-related symptom that was interfering in their life. We found that over half the women with severe symptoms were not receiving any treatment at all for their symptoms, and we found that the severity of vasomotor symptoms, what we commonly classify as hot flashes and night sweats, is directly related to the severity of mental health symptoms, including anxiety and depression.
What I want to share with you today are our not-yet-published data from the study based on analysis that was a collaboration with economists at the Vancouver school of economics. These results are not yet peer-reviewed, and they are a snapshot in time, but three key messages stand out.
First, menopause is quietly reshaping women's careers. More than one in five women in our study told us that in just the past six months, menopause symptoms had forced a change in their working life. About one in six had cut back on their hours; one in 10 had turned down a promotion; about one in 20 had quit, retired early or changed their jobs; and one in four had missed work because of symptoms related to menopause in the past year.
The more severe the menopause symptoms, the bigger the impact. Among women with low symptom scores, 7% reported a career disruption, but among those with high symptom scores, it was nearly 40%. Of the 16 women who had been laid off or fired, 88% of them had severe menopause-related symptoms. We also asked about productivity without mentioning menopause at all, and the pattern held. Among women with few symptoms, one in four said that they had been less productive at work, and among women with severe symptoms, it was nearly three in four.
The second key message is that this impact is largely invisible in standard economic statistics. When we looked at whether women were employed, how many hours they worked, or what they earned, the difference was small. This doesn't mean that menopause doesn't matter. It means that women are absorbing it. A promotion turned down doesn't show up in this year's paycheque. It shows up over the next decade and in her pension. Women with the most severe symptoms and disabilities were the least likely to complete our survey, so if anything, our findings are an underestimate.
The third key message was that the burden falls hardest on women with the least protection. For women in temporary, contract or self-employed work, the link between menopause symptoms and career disruption was nearly twice as strong as for women in permanent jobs. These are the same women who are least likely to have paid sick leave. In our study, over 90% of permanent employees had it, compared to only 40% of women in non-permanent jobs and only 20% in the self-employed group.
Two other findings from our survey really matter. The symptoms most strongly tied to work disruption were not hot flashes. They were low mood, anxiety, irritability and exhaustion—in other words, the mental health and cognitive symptoms. For women still having periods, heavy and painful bleeding added to the burden that they faced.
What can be done in response to these findings? I offer four suggestions.
One, let's measure it. Canada has no national data that follow menopause symptoms, work and earnings over time. Statistics Canada—