Menopause forces women to leave jobs due to lack of understanding and support - Singh

Women going through menopause, at the prime of their employment, have left their jobs abruptly because they cannot cope with their work and their employers do not understand what is happening, and these women, only realising later what they were experiencing due to the lack of support services and general understanding, often remain silent because they do not verbalise what is happening to them.

This has been highlighted by Fiji Women's Rights Movement Executive Director Nalini Singh on fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan while talking about her experience with menopause.

Singh says she has induced menopause because her perimenopause was very severe and while she was going through it, she thought it was part of the process and it should be fine after a while but she did not know that prolonged heavy bleeding could mean severe anaemia and other related complications such as infection.

Singh says the symptoms of menopause are not being looked at a holistic way where symptoms such as aching bones, thinning hair and vision problems are looked at individually.

She says when we are educated about the kind of symptoms women could go through at a particular age period, then we have the power ourselves to speak up about it.

Singh says it is not menopause that kills you but the interlinked issues.

Singh further says if family members, men included, are aware of what could be happening, then they could be helping the woman seek the right type of help rather than call her "sick" and say she is resting.

Singh stresses that she is not sick but she needs to have the right hormones working in her body again, so that she has the energy and the ability to carry on with whatever she wants to do.

While highlighting women's health seeking behaviour, the Executive Director says women will take traditional herbal medicine and go to prayer meetings while significantly suffering from reproductive health issues, including symptoms or manifestations of menopause and peri-menopause.

Singh says it can lead to very dire consequences and health implications.

She is encouraging more women to talk about menopause, even in their peers, and then seek out the help that they could be getting from the professional service providers.

You can watch the full show on our website, fijivillage or catch the podcast, fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Please also share this widely to help break the silence about menopause.