Is it hot in here?

October 18 is World Menopause Day, a day to raise awareness of the menopause and the support options available for improving health and wellbeing.

As a mid-ish 40s woman, I’m immersed in everything and anything menopause and perimenopause, and the algorithm hits me with it all the time ranging from educational to entertaining to completely frustrating. Even with all that content out there, a 2025 study from the Shoppers Foundation for Women’s Health found that 79% of women feel they lack the information they need to support themselves through menopause, and one in five isn’t familiar with the term “perimenopause.”

Many of us on the Ramp team are in some stage of perimenopause or menopause, we’re all open books who share tips and tricks and learn in exchange with each other. I’m grateful for these relationships as I know not every workplace has this vibe. The Menopause Foundation of Canada’s Menopause and Work in Canada report estimates that unmanaged menopause symptoms cost the Canadian economy $3.5 billion a year, including about 540,000 lost days of work. A quarter of respondents said they hid their symptoms at work, and 87% of working women said their employer doesn’t provide menopause support or they don’t know whether it does.

It’s super important to me that I have a workplace and team that understands and accommodates people navigating these symptoms. We make sure everyone feels heard, seen and, importantly, supported.

That’s why we have a Menopause and Menstruation Policy that supports anyone on our team experiencing menopause, perimenopause, PMS, PMDD or menstruation symptoms. Everyone’s experience is different, so the policy is built around flexibility and accommodation. That might mean taking more breaks, stepping away from the screen, or seeking personal or professional support. The policy was written to reduce stigma and raise awareness in the workplace.

Earlier this year, we released the Ramp Pulse: The Menstrual Equity Conversation in Canada (in partnership with Caddle), a survey of 8,000+ Canadians on how menstruation is understood and talked about. About one in five Canadians across every generation said menstruation is still framed as something people feel uncomfortable talking about. When we looked at the 2,051 respondents who have menstruated in the past but no longer do (whether through menopause, medical reasons or other life changes), that rose to more than one in four, and almost half said it’s either uncomfortable or rarely talked about publicly. If that many people who once menstruated still see menstruation as hard to talk about, I’d hazard a guess that menopause feels at least as taboo. And the workplace is one of the places it shows up every day.

In my World Mental Health Day post last week, I wrote about CAMH’s The Maze and how it names the systemic issues people face when they seek care. Women’s College Hospital Foundation does something similar in its new campaign, The Future Follows Us, launched in September.

People are pushing back, raising their voices and advocating for research and better care, and menopause has become a trending topic. That may be because the generation experiencing symptoms now is more open about their health than earlier generations, but whatever the reason, people are talking about it. Women’s College is stepping in to lead that conversation, and its campaign makes the point that it was there first: “We opened a menopause clinic before it was medicine’s hottest trend.”

Alongside the campaign, the hospital launched the free Menopause Empowerment Project in August, developed by its clinicians in partnership with people with lived experience. Earlier this month, it shared “More than a moment”, a longer-term approach to menopause and midlife health. It includes a new nurse practitioner-led clinic and a study that aims to follow at least 30,000 women and gender-diverse people aged 35 to 55 across the GTA. This is an org that is 100% walking the talk.

This also connects to the broader health of women and gender-diverse people, which medicine has historically overlooked. For years, white males were studied as the ‘norm’ population and it was assumed that people outside this category would have the same response (UBC Advancing Health). Here in Canada, Heart & Stroke reported in 2020 that heart disease and stroke are the leading cause of premature death for women, “but two-thirds of clinical research is based on men.” The Canadian Institutes of Health Research now requires funding applicants to integrate sex and gender into their research design where appropriate (UBC Advancing Health).

So when research on women’s bodies does make the news, people notice. Earlier this year, my Instagram feed filled up with people reacting to new research from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland. Scientists grew organoids that mimic the endometrium to learn how it repairs itself after every period without scarring, something that has long been a mystery. The reaction I kept seeing was some version of “they’ll try anything else before researching women’s bodies,” and I deeply understand the frustration.

If your organization talks about health equity, look at how your own policies support people experiencing menopause and menstruation symptoms.

People are already seeing menopause content in their feeds, and organizations with credibility in health and wellbeing can help make sure clear, evidence-based information reaches them too. Our friends at The Period Purse do this well. Their Ask the Expert: (Peri)menopause session brought together a clinician-scientist, a registered dietitian and a naturopathic doctor, and they shared the key takeaways as a free resource. This weekend, they’ll be at The National Menopause Show in Mississauga (Booth #822) with a message that ties it all together: “Period Poverty Doesn’t Stop at Menopause.”

If you’d like to dig into the data, you can download the Ramp Pulse: The Menstrual Equity Conversation in Canada. And if you’d like to talk through what this means for your organization, book a call.