KUOW72%
Menopause expert hopeful about WA workplace developments 39%
By Kim Malcolm38% John O'Brien35%
6/13/2026, 12:33:40 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, False Dilemma, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 16.6% saturation with 126 hits. Analysis detected 1,182 faulty-reasoning hits from 757 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.7% and a BS Rank of 39% (12,587 of 20,407 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 61.70% of the article peer group.
Washington state might create new workplace policies for people with menopause.
Governor Bob Ferguson signed an executive order last week that creates a work group to look into this question.
Any new policies could impact some 600,000 Washington workers.
To get an expert's opinion on this, KUOW’s Kim Malcolm spoke to Dr.
Susan Reed, an OBGYN and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Kim Malcolm: At his executive order signing, Governor Ferguson said this:
“We are losing people in the workforce with tremendous knowledge, tremendous experience.
We're losing their voices in leadership because we are not doing enough to prepare for a natural stage of life that impacts half our population.”
What was your take on that move?
Is this the right approach?
Dr.
Reed: I'm grinning on this end.
He's spot on.
We are finally recognizing that a very natural phase of life for over half the world's population, we don't think about in the right ways.
We think a lot of states like pregnancy, and we've made big strides there, but it took a long time.
I think of menopause no different than a reproductive stage, and it's long been recognized that people can have disabling symptoms for up to a decade that certainly impact all of the things that our governor mentioned.
RELATED: Getting past the ‘hot flash’ cliché: the science of treating menopause
A study from the National Institutes of Health on the workplace flagged working women being affected by poor memory, brain fog, fatigue, lack of concentration.
These symptoms tend to come along as women are in their prime earning years.
What's the impact on individuals that you've seen?
Tremendous.
I think people don't come into my office until they're fairly desperate because they're told this is natural and normal, and they're supposed to buck up.
And I think women are no longer just riding along.
I call hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and mood changes the big three, and those run together, are interchangeable.
But if the other half of the world's population, men, couldn't sleep for almost a decade and were having hot flashes in work meetings and then had challenges with mood, we'd be in a very different place, I think.
So, just acknowledging this is a normal life process, but there are some very simple things we can do to make this better.
Melinda French Gates wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times recently calling for a revolution in menopause care.
Clearly, she thinks it hasn't gone far enough.
Do you agree with her?
I agree.
She just gave an amazing grant for education that I think will make a big difference for healthcare providers.
That will be an important piece of this puzzle.
What would it take for that revolution in the care of menopause symptoms to come about?
Well, like so many things in life, it's like a piece of woven fabric, and if you don't have all the threads going the right direction, you're not going to get to where you need to go.
What Melinda French Gates mentioned was really educating our providers and educating the population about this time in a woman's life and what interventions are successful to help with treatment.
During the pandemic, everyone was sent home, those that could.
In recent years there's been new pressure for people to come back into the workplace.
Will making more accommodations for working at home or flexible work hours run into that current moment in the workplace?
Well, it might, but if we’re going to get better work out of that individual by giving them some flexibility to be the best they can be, then it's going to be a win-win situation.
We need to get over that hurdle of looking down on people who are experiencing a natural phase of life, and see this as the norm, that if people haven't slept all night because they're experiencing a normal stage of their life, that we're going to make some accommodation.
And usually, these folks are going to work better after that.
Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.
Dr.
Reed recommends these resources:
The Making Menopause Work Pilot Program.
The Menopause Society for discussion of common menopause symptoms.
MsFLASH for patient education about symptoms and possible treatment options.
Information about what is happening to your body as you go through perimenopause from SWAN (Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation)
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