It’s time to put menopausal women where they belong: in charge – The Age

My husband opposes this strategy, worrying that all the oestrogen Im funnelling into our diet will have adverse effects upon his manhood, but his objections fall on deaf, and grouchy, metapausal ears.

Meanwhile, my pre-pubescent daughter is worrying about periods, and so I spend lots of time reading to her from the excellent books you can now get, specially designed to demystify puberty for girls. I tell her that menstruation is normal, and nothing to be afraid of. But I feel a bit disingenuous, because truthfully, being a woman can suck. It can be messy, and leaky and ragey. And at the end of it, all you get is chin hair and a dry clacker.

Ive been noticing books and articles on menopause too, but unlike my daughters cheery menstruation literature, they rarely manage to make the change sound like a fun time spent with your gal pals. Instead, theyre all about things such as vaginal thinning, which is an idea thats very hard to spin into a positive.

But the real reason menopause feels so challenging is that it isnt just a physical change. It also marks a turning point. The end of the first half of your life. The end of youth, of vitality. At least thats how its often depicted.

Yet there are studies that show people are happier as they get older. That age does bring a kind of wisdom, and perspective. A time where we let go of all the silly worries and hang-ups of our youth. For example, I recently bought myself an extremely sensible pair of sandals. Hideous, its true, but my god they are comfortable. And I dont feel a smidgen of embarrassment about that.

Even so, ageing continues to be treated as a terrible misfortune, and the old are treated as, at best, a joke, at worst, expendable and irrelevant. This attitude reached a new low point in certain attempts to stem the COVID-19 panic. I saw many people posting and tweeting on the subject, essentially saying Dont worry, the virus isnt as serious as they make out. Its mostly just oldies wholl die. As if old folk arent people at all.

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Its often argued that the young have good reason to resent the old. After all, its mostly older people who vote against effective climate action, stealing the future from those wholl still be around to see it. And its true that old folk are, on average, more conservative. But then I think back to my youth and that of my peers, and how messy and hung-up we were. How much we floundered along, in our own self-absorbed worlds.

Yes, the old have their foibles, but so do the young. Perhaps if we could find some balance, create a world where everyone was valued, and heard, we might start getting somewhere. Alternatively, we could just put the metapausal women in charge. We might not always make the right decisions, but I guarantee you everyone would be too scared to argue.

@monicadux

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It's time to put menopausal women where they belong: in charge - The Age