When leadership coach Lisa Gaines was offered a “career-making” gig with an influential CEO that she’d been in negotiations over for months, the last thing she expected was that she would have to walk away from it.
“It was just an amazing opportunity,” the 52-year-old told news.com.au. “It involved a heap of travel, but right as I was about to say yes to it I realised it might very well be the death of me.”
After years of steadily climbing the ladder, Ms Gaines had found herself in a maelstrom of symptoms caused by perimenopause – the state of hormonal flux that impacts women as their bodies transition into menopause and can last over 10 years.
Symptoms including shoulder and wrist pain, digestive problems and chronic sinusitis had sprung up seemingly overnight, and the mental and emotional symptoms such as heightened anxiety, extreme self-doubt and sometimes manic emotional highs and lows had combined to make life increasingly difficult.
“I was at the point where I’d had to accept that overextending myself work-wise meant chronic, debilitating pain and exhaustion,” she said. “I just had to walk away from the job.”
It’s time to Fire Up! Menopause will affect more than 50 per cent of the Australian population but women are struggling to access basic information and treatment, and talking about it is still taboo.
In partnership with Priceline Pharmacy, we want to change that. We want to start a national conversation. We want better education for healthcare professionals. We want every Australian to understand the symptoms, and what help is available, so no woman suffers in silence. Add your support to our poll below.
The great female midlife career exodus
Sadly, Ms Gaines’ story is an all-too common one.
Data from news.com.au’s Fire Up reader survey shows a quarter of Australian women have considered quitting their jobs because of menopause, with the general consensus among the 2218 respondents that Australian workplaces currently do not adequately support employees experiencing perimenopause.
It’s a problem that drives right into the heart of the national economy. The 2024 Senate Inquiry into issues related to perimenopause and menopause confirmed that early retirement due to menopause costs Australian women a collective $15.2 billion in lost income and superannuation. The flow-on effects of this financial blow, in a country where women over 55 remain one of the fastest-growing demographics experiencing homelessness, cannot be overstated.
‘Like falling off a cliff’
For Ms Gaines, the symptoms came on after a particularly traumatic year. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, her sister, who lived in her native Ireland with four children between four and 24, was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.
“It was peak Covid, there were no vaccines at this point, and at the same time her husband had torn his achilles tendon so couldn’t walk,” she said of the family crisis that was unfolding across the world.
“I don’t have children, so I had the flexibility to be able to go and help, so I packed up everything and moved over. At one point both my sister and brother-in-law had surgery in the same month, so to be there to help with the children was vital.”
Ms Gaines brushes off any praise for these actions.
“Ah, what else would you do really?” she said. “And it was all worth it, my sister survived thank God, and I was able to be there for the family.”
But what ended up being a year in pandemic-ravaged Ireland – away from home and often while averaging only two or three hours of sleep a night – began to show the toll it had taken once Ms Gaines returned to her life and home in Canberra.
“I kept thinking, why can’t I get my sleep back on track?” she recalls, “and I suddenly had these sinus issues, and wildly fluctuating moods and energy. It would be as if I had these surges of hormonal energy, like I had to get stuff done, then I would just crash for days in exhaustion.”
“It was like falling off a cliff all of a sudden – everything went wrong at once.”
The midlife collision
For many Australian women, this hormonal storm arrives at the same time as significant lifestyle pressures, further exacerbating the issues.
“It’s called the midlife collision,” explains Jean Hailles CEO Dr Sarah White.
“It’s the concept that when you get to midlife, you’ve got a job, you’re at the height of your financial responsibilities, but the gender pay gap is kicking in retirement is no longer an abstract concept, so you’re very aware of your earning and your superannuation, and the financial pressures are pretty intense.”
“You are often caring for children at the same time as caring for ageing parents or other family members, your knees are starting to give out because of years of playing netball,” she continues, “(you are experiencing) all those other things that go wrong for men and women when we hit our 50s, and then we’ve also got this layer of gendered ageism, and sometimes that’s internalised.”
In other words: right as the hormonal proverbial hits the fan, so does all the extra stuff of life.
For Ms Gaines, this all rings true.
“I just thought – this thing is really kicking my arse,” she says simply, “I had to make some very significant changes to my entire work structure.”
For example, she and her partner moved from Canberra down to Bermagui, a small town on the NSW South Coast, where she has restructured things to allow her to work from home.
“I realised how depleted I got by being in the training room,” she says, “I’m happiest physically and health-wise when I’m working from home as much as possible.”
It’s something she acknowledges she’s able to do because of the support of her partner – something that single women experiencing these changes don’t have the luxury of.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t for my partner financially, I wouldn’t have survived on my own. I don’t think,” she says.
“That’s why I feel sorry for all women going through perimenopause, who have to soldier on, can’t change their lifestyle as much as I could… how do people do it who are really stuck with jobs they have to do, and the output has to be at those same corporate levels?”
It’s the reason Ms Gaines has now dedicated herself to, in her own words, “talking people’s ears off about perimenopause” whenever she gets the chance.
“I really would like for people to understand about what women are going through,” she says, “so they can have a little bit of flexibility in the workplace. Understanding and flexibility go a long way, and something does need to shift.”
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