You have a woman in your life. A partner. A sister. A daughter. A colleague you've worked alongside for years, and at some point, maybe recently, maybe a while back, something shifted. Maybe she noticed too. Maybe not yet.

She seemed more tired than usual. Less like herself. Quicker to doubt, slower to speak up. You noticed, but you didn't have words for what you were seeing. Neither did she.

That's not a coincidence. It's a gap in the conversation that nobody has bothered to close. Until now.

Here's what it probably was.

At some point between late 30s and 55, sometimes earlier, women's hormones begin to shift. It's called perimenopause, and it can last years before menopause itself arrives. During that time, the symptoms aren't just physical. They hit exactly where capable, high-performing women are most vulnerable.

Concentration. Confidence. The ability to hold a thought in a meeting without losing the thread.

Nothing is broken, but biological changes are underway, and nobody in that woman's working life ever gave her the language for it, let alone the support.

So she does what high-performing women do. She pushes through. She calls it stress. She apologises for things that don't require an apology. She starts taking up less space.

And you watch it happen, and you don't know what you're seeing.

This week, women shared this with me. Anonymously. Voluntarily. Honestly.

"Brain fog is the worst. There's so much to keep track of, and when you can't remember things, you become deeply uncertain of yourself."

"I started doubting my own competence. Am I still good enough? It made me less productive, not due to the symptoms themselves, but because of the thoughts the symptoms created."

"It was hard to explain the absences to my male manager. There was very little understanding. Which made me feel like I was letting my employer down, which made the stress worse."

"Some days I just wasn't myself. I had nothing left. And I couldn't explain why."

"I felt like I was losing myself, the inner restlessness, the zero confidence. It comes and goes. Some days the whole working week is just a challenge to get through."

These are not women who are struggling to do their jobs. These are women who are doing their jobs while managing something nobody prepared them, or you, for.

Here's what's interesting.

In almost every workshop I run, when I ask men what they wish they'd known, the answer is the same: “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing”.

That instinct - to say nothing rather than risk getting it wrong, is costing organisations some of their most experienced people.

One in ten women leave their jobs because of menopause symptoms. They can do their work. The problem is nobody built a bridge between what they were experiencing and what support was available.

You can be that bridge. You don't need a qualification. You need awareness and a willingness to have a conversation you may not have had before.

What does that look like in practice?

It looks like a leader who notices a change and says: "I just want to check in, how are you doing?" Full stop. No assumptions, no diagnosis, no HR script.

It looks like a manager who doesn't interpret quietness as disengagement, or slower output as reduced capability.

It looks like a workplace where women don't have to feel like they're failing their employer simply because their body is going through something their employer never acknowledged.

Here's where it's heading.

In the UK, from 2027, menopause action plans become mandatory for employers with 250 or more staff. And from January 2027, unfair dismissal protection kicks in after just six months of employment, with the compensation cap removed entirely.

What that means in plain language: a culture that has quietly ignored this conversation is now a legal and financial liability. Employment tribunals citing menopause have already tripled in three years.

The organisations that will weather this well are the ones that started the conversation early and meant it.

October is World Menopause Awareness Month. Six months from now. Enough time to do this properly - not as a tick-box exercise, but as something that actually changes how women experience your workplace.

That window is open.

If this landed, share it with one man who needs to read it: a leader, a manager, a CEO who you know is ready to do more than write a policy.

I work with organisations across maritime, general transport, finance and childcare sectors to build cultures where women stay, contribute and lead. If you want to be one of the organisations that gets this right, let's have a conversation.

I'm Torild Boe Stokes, founder of Pause Effect.