“It is only post-menopause that a woman can apply herself to a job the way that she did when she was in her twenties” says Helen Rumble from the UK Times Online.

And what does she mean by that?  Well she goes on to say that “at the beginning and end of life gender differences fade away”.  

If we substitute “career” for “life”, her reference to a woman’s twenties and the age of menopause might correlate to the beginning and end of a career. But why we would be able to apply ourselves to our jobs like we did in our twenties? And not in say our 30’s and 40’s?  Is she trying to garner positive support for employing older women? If so three cheers for that but unfortunately not.

So let’s look at her argument.  In what way can we compare our 20’s to post-menopause?   Menstruation?  Hormone fluctuations?  They are opposites.  So that leaves children.  She implies that women in their 20’s and post-menopausal women are child-free and being child-free makes them better workers. She is supporting the view that mothers make bad employees.

She quotes Harriet  Harman on that. Harriet was approaching 60 at the time of her quote.  And probably quite a bit “post” menopause.   A more appropriate timeline would be “retirement age”.   Yet “post-menopausal” was used. 

So why are we perpetuating the discriminatory practice of labelling women by their sexual status?   Rather than, say, actual age?  Or parental status?  Because menopause like sex, sells.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Hot Flash!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.