The ‘change’ in attitudes to menopause is welcome – but it’s now wrongly viewed as a disease

And even if it was uttered, the reference was negative: a vice-president of the United States, Hubert Humphrey – he was Lyndon Johnson’s VP – famously said that you couldn’t elect a mid-life woman to the White House, because no menopausal woman could be trusted to have her finger on the nuclear button. She might go into one of those emotional meltdowns and irrational rages so identified with “the change of life”.

Part of the secrecy, negativity and taboo around menopause was endorsed by women themselves.

The first wave of feminists had to struggle against the well-entrenched idea that females were “the weaker sex”, and “frail vessels” who might go into a decline if their sensibilities were tested. In reaction, ambitious women felt they had to go the extra mile to prove they were tough enough, and that they weren’t going to be held back by conditions euphemistically called “female troubles”.

To admit to, say, menstrual problems, was letting the side down – giving the patriarchy an excuse to undervalue or even demote women.

A perfectly nice and decent colleague, whose wife had just had a difficult hysterectomy, said to me: “You women and your wombs. Always some problem or other.”

Understandably, the fact that the menopause can hit like a tornado –causing ghastly hot flushes, sleepless nights and emotional moods – was considered unwise to advertise. And agony-aunt advice about suffering from a dry vagina were hardly likely to enhance your chances of a date. 

But that has all altered, and menopause is now spoken about widely and openly. Health professionals are encouraged to address the issue properly, and prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT). In Britain, there was panic in recent months when there was a shortage of HRT medication and patches: doctors were accused of “medical misogyny” for not ensuring its availability.

Celebrities from Michelle Obama to Gwyneth Paltrow and Oprah Winfrey have spoken about their menopause experience. Ms Paltrow (49) has introduced the world to the “perimenopause” – the time preceding the menopause (two to 10 years before).

In Britain, the TV presenter Davina McCall has made a speciality of publicising menopause issues, campaigning to erase the taboo, and promoting oestrogen medication. Even before her, Germaine Greer had written about the positives around post-menopausal life, and “owning” the condition of being “an old crone”, or a “witch”, as older women were often seen in story and fable.

Candour about menopause has been especially welcomed by women who it hit like a horrible surprise, and during which they often felt alone. Younger women are now being taught what to expect during menopause. “Menopause training” for human resources personnel are on the agenda in business life.

And yet there remains some ambivalence about whether the new menopause openness is always an unalloyed good. In the latest series of the terrific Danish show Borgen, the leading politician, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babette Knudsen) is seen struggling with international affairs of state, while suffering hellish hot flushes and dismaying forgetfulness – she can’t take HRT because she’s had breast cancer. Moreover, her ex-husband has married a younger woman and is expecting a new baby, a storyline highlighting Birgitte’s loneliness and past-it feeling.

The Danish drama (on Netflix) is brutally honest about a menopausal woman’s woes, but does it resurrect certain old prejudices?

Some critics also think that the “medicalising” of the menopause has gone too far. In the current British Medical Journal, Martha Hickey, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, writes that overhyped attention to the menopause “is turning a natural process into a narrowly defined disease requiring treatment”.

Big pharma is pushing the idea that some women need to be on HRT for life: the global HRT market is worth over $18bn (€17bn), and growing.

Women differ as individuals, and for some, this change of life is just a natural process which they cope with very well. Others are poleaxed: some are in-between. HRT can be a great treatment – I was glad to have access to it myself for a couple of years. But Prof Hickey’s point is valid: menopause is not a disease.

My mother had an interesting menopause experience in her 40s. Her periods stopped and she thought she had sailed easily through “the change” effortlessly. Then she found she was pregnant – with me. A shock treatment – but she never had another menopause symptom.