How can adland retain mid-life women and normalise menopause?

27th October 2022

Invisible Powerhouse
Opinion

Campaign have released a piece looking at the failure by adland to tackle menopause affects workplace representation and the industry’s output. They included comments from our Chief Strategy Officer, Ayesha Walawalkar.

Read a snippet below:

The stats are stark. One in 10 women who had been employed during the menopause has left work due to symptoms, according to Fawcett Society research, Menopause and the Workplace. Almost half (44%) said menopause had affected their ability to work, 14% had reduced their hours, 14% had gone part time, and 8% had not applied for promotion, meaning fewer women in more senior roles.

Mapped onto the UK population, that would represent 333,000 women leaving their jobs due to the menopause. Despite this, eight out of 10 women said their employer hasn’t shared information, trained staff, or put in place a menopause policy.

For the ad industry, this is a double hit. For one, it affects the representation of women in adland. Then there’s also the matter of advertising aimed at midlife women, an audience that many believe has been ignored, marginalised and stereotyped as a direct result of the paucity of women – especially in creative departments – within the industry.

So, what is adland doing to help midlife and menopausal women stay in their jobs, and create work that resonates with the audience?

We don’t need IPA Census data to tell us that people past a certain age are underrepresented within ad agencies. But it’s particularly acute for women over the age of 45. There’s a triple whammy: the career break that comes often around childbirth, then you come back, you’re facing increased pressure, and you get the menopause hitting as well.

None of us wants to place another discriminatory barrier there by treating menopause as though it’s a sort of disability on top of sex and age discrimination. But we are educating about a life stage, quite simply, to men as well as women. Many of the measures we’ve put in place to help women deal with issues related to menopause; flexible working, the need to take breaks, are also relevant to people returning from having a baby, for example.

We talk about the simple things we can do: being courteous towards each other and making it easier for our colleagues to participate every day is basic.

Ayesha Walawalkar

Chief Strategy Officer