I have made this point before – see, for example, the two posts linked below – and I will continue to repeat it until it no longer pertains.* Until women and men approximate equity in top leadership posts.
I will especially repeat it when there is new information that underscores my overarching point. Which is that one of the reasons the number of women at the top remains everywhere so low is that the bodies of women are different from those of men. Moreover, unless and until these differences are accommodated, women will continue to be disadvantaged.
It recently became known that one of the effects of menopause is musculoskeletal. The effect is not rare – it impacts more than half of all menopausal women – and it can be debilitating. The “musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause” is characterized by symptoms including joint pain, loss of muscle mass and bone density, and worsening osteoarthritis.
Women can try to prevent the syndrome and, when it occurs, to remediate its symptoms. But if body aches characteristic of menopause are widespread and some of the time difficult to deal with, they will impact the capacity of women to compete with men for top leadership posts.
Additionally, the timing could not be worse. Symptoms of menopause occur just when career trajectories for women and men alike peak – between the ages of approximately 45 to 55.
To suggest that this and other physical and psychological differences between women and men are irrelevant to the leadership gap strikes me now as it did before. As ridiculous.
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*Also see my chapter titled, “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in Randal Thompson et al, Women Embodied Leaders (Emerald, 20024).