The Menstruality Podcast - 152. Menstruation and Menopause in the Workplace (Dr Lara Owen)

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Today we’re delighted to welcome one of the original menstruality trailblazers, Dr Lara Owen back to the podcast. We’re exploring a topic which comes up regularly in the Red School community - how to practice menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause at work, and how to create workplaces which honour our cyclical needs, particularly during menstruation and menopause. Dr. Lara Owen is recognised internationally for her pioneering and continuing work on menstruation. She is the author of the ground-breaking book, Her Blood Is Gold, holds a PhD in menstrual organization, and is a founding member of the Menstruation Research Network (UK). As we explore today, she recently helped to birth the new British Standards Institute Menstrual and Menopause workplace policies which are going to have a huge impact, and will soon be rolled out internationally.  Her new book, Reorganising Menstruation explores what happens when menstrual stigma starts to be disrupted in a mainstream way, and I left this conversation feeling so much hope for the truly cycle-aware world that is on it’s way - I hope you inspires you too. We explore:How the Covid pandemic - and the normalisation of working from home - ushered in the exciting new British Standards Institute Menstrual and Menopause workplace policy - a 40 page document with guidelines for employers and management for how to accommodate the menstrual cycle and menopause in the workplace. How menstrual cycle awareness can become a way to optimise or ‘hack’ our energy in the workplace and the importance of asking ourselves if we’re unconsciously supporting commodified materialistic worldview or helping to create a world where we can menstruate in the way we want to at work. The power of ‘post-menopause zest’ at work.  ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyLara Owen: @drlaraowen - https://www.instagram.com/drlaraowen

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm talking to one of the original menstruality trailblazers, Dr. Lara Owen, and welcoming her back to the podcast. We've had a couple of episodes with her, episode 52 and 72. But today we're exploring a topic which comes up

all the time in the Red School community, which is how to practice menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause at work and how to create workplaces which honour our cyclical needs, particularly during menstruation and menopause. So the amazing Dr. Lara Owen is recognized internationally for her pioneering and continuing work on menstruation for decades now. She's the author of the groundbreaking book, which is one of my favorites, Her Blood is Gold. She holds a PhD in menstrual organization and she's a founding member of the Menstruation Research Network in the UK. And as we talk about today, she recently helped to birth something amazing, the new British Standards Institute menstrual and menopause workplace policies, which are going to have a huge impact.

And as she talks about are being rolled out internationally as well. In her new book, Reorganising Menstruation, which is coming out soon she explores what happens when menstrual stigma starts to be disrupted in a mainstream way and I left this conversation feeling so much hope for the cycle aware world that really is on its way and I hope it really inspires you too. Lara, thank you so much for coming back to the podcast. I'm really, really excited to talk to you today. How are you going? How are things with you today? Good, good. It's a very busy time. I've got a lot of work to finish up and then I'm hoping to have a good break over the summer to rest and recuperate. So I suppose it's one of the things

when you don't have a menstrual cycle to track anymore about your level of activity. I really have to make sure I take chunks of time off and sort of mid-summer and mid-winter are good times for that. Lovely. Have you got any nice plans? Yeah, yeah.

You obviously don't have a menstrual cycle anymore. is it 18 or 19 years post-menopause now yeah it is yeah yeah about that yeah are there cycles that you are tracking in your life i mean there's obviously you're in the annual cycle and twice a year you're taking a pause you said but are there other cycles that you live within that you that you track? I usually know where the moon is. I live in an area where, you know, I'm in a town, but I'm in a sort of countryfied part of it, really. So I've got a big sky from my windows and garden. So I usually know where the moon is and I follow that. But mostly, I think I'm really following my body. So you don't stop having a cycle. It's just not as loud. But there's still cyclical rhythms in the body. And sometimes you're just more tired than other times. And sometimes you're more outgoing. And, of course, all of this stuff around cycles got

really turned upside down in a way by covid i think those two years where we had a lot of time being you know having to behave really differently um of course some people got ill as well i think i'm seeing that in people now that there's been a sort of knock-on effect to that in terms of people's well-being um and uh not necessarily entirely negative there's been a sort of knock-on effect to that in terms of people's well-being um and uh not necessarily entirely negative there've been some really good outcomes for example the normalization of working from home um which has been great for a lot of women um uh particularly in terms of child care not having to go so far to pick your kid up necessarily from school or whatever you've got to do like narrowing those distances that people have to travel but also childcare, not having to go so far to pick your kid up necessarily from school or whatever.

You've got to do like narrowing those distances that people have to travel. But also with the menstrual cycle, there's some good data showing that people with endometriosis actually had a better time in terms of their symptoms during the lockdowns because they were able to just do what their body wanted to do rather than forcing it that seems to have had an effect on on on symptoms which was something that obviously in the menstrual cycle awareness world we'd thought for a long time that there might be some correlation it's not obviously the whole story but there's some correlation between endometriosis and how much you can follow your body rather than forcing it into a non-cyclical reality that that seems to have got better for a lot of people during during the COVID years so you know it's interesting when you go through these things as a collective and I think it takes a long time to actually understand what the impact of such a radical change is. Yeah that's really fascinating

it feels good to talk about it, actually, you know, I don't think we're talking about it enough. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. But yes, it's and it does have an impact on menstruation. And I do think that these, even though the new menstrual workplace policies that are coming in now and the new guidelines from the BSI, the British Standards Institute, which is, you know, a massive thing to happen that such a mainstream organisation, government funded, and it now has a 40 plus page document with guidelines for employers and management for how to accommodate menstruation and menopause in the workplace. I mean, it's really actually pretty radical thing

to happen. Even though a lot of, you know, some of us have been talking about these issues for, you know, at least a decade, it had been somewhat in the public arena, bits and bobs, especially menopause. But to have that document now, I'm not sure that would have happened without COVID because we started meeting, I think in during the latter end of 2021 so it had been sort of an idea but it actually but we were all everyone on the panel was operating out of the experience of recent experience of Covid um so you know I think it it may have had an impact in accelerating some things to do with menstruation and menopause that were sort of in the pipeline. Just the whole idea of well-being at work, health at work has ratcheted up to another level with more awareness and more conversation and more literacy and more sense of responsibility, you know, that employers have.

And also there's this argument that it's actually a human rights issue. And so all of those coming together, I think, you know, COVID did play a part in pushing that forward. I think we're seeing it in the world of mental health as well. Absolutely, yes. Everything accelerated. Yeah. So you were on the panel for this. Yeah. Everything accelerated. Yeah. So you were on the panel for this. Yeah. How was that process? And are you pleased with the outcome?

Like, do you think it contains everything that you wanted it to or is there much more for us to do? Oh, well, an endeavour like that is a massive compromise you know you don't it it's it's political it's um you know you you can't go in with um a sort of radical perspective really you can get some things in you know um I did manage to get the term menstruation because at one point it was changed to menstrual health and I said no it's important to actually have menstruation in there because of the stigma. You know, if you make it all about health, you're basically saying none of the other aspects apply. So anyway, I managed to get that in, but not into the international one. So the international one is menopause and menstrual health. And the word menstruation has been taken out. So I've lost

that one. But hey, you know, so there's little things like that, like what words are used and what that implies that you can argue about for forever and some some of it you get some of it you don't um there's a um a big well there's certain things were emphasized that i might not have emphasized so much but the main thing is that the spirit of the policy is that the menstrual cycle is just is a normal thing that women live through. It shouldn't be stigmatized. It should be acknowledged. We should understand it. And anyone who has any symptoms, so it is very symptom based, should have accommodation in the workplace to be able to work around that and not have to feel that they have to hide it or that they have to work through it or that they shouldn't progress

in their career because of it. So that's very, very important. It doesn't tick all the boxes of a menstrual cycle. Sorry, that's a terrible phrase, tick all the boxes. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's the sort of language you start using when you do these things um you uh of a menstrual cycle awareness at MCA perspective yeah because there's no really um apart from a discussion about stigma and the impact that has on everybody who menstruates there's not really any any allowance for uh people to take time off when they have their period unless they're too symptomatic to be able to work so it's not following the sort of processes for example that red school people who study with red school would

do around their period it's not you know going that far you could say um but like her blood is gold there's not a spiritual or even a psychological component but one wouldn't really expect that in history with a you know a mainstream agenda and really we need more research to show the impact of living like that on symptomatology so um the more the more data we get demonstrating a relationship between following the cycle and having say reduced dysmenorrhea or endometriosis or whatever um you know that then actually lends a practical basis to menstrual cycle awareness. So it's, you know, step by step, but it is a big step. And then now we're doing the International Standard Organization policy, which is really complex because it's very interesting.

We've just had all the responses in from the different countries about whether they'll even join this policy in the ISO. And quite a lot of countries are saying we don't need to because it's already covered by medical cover. People could take sick leave. We don't want to do anything else. We don't see any need to make menstruation and menopause a special case. It's just a medical issue. And then the Islamic countries say we're not having anything to do with any policy that mentions the term trans because we don't accept that um so you know there's that it's uh it's that everything starts to fragment a bit and then you're down to well what's really really important and what can the majority of countries agree upon so i think i suspect the policy is going to get um um

yeah shorter i think it's going to get shorter and it will be more around things like you know managers need to understand and accommodations need to be made um but it won't be as perhaps political as the first one. I mean, in the first one, there were long discussions about how to include or not include trans and non-binary people and how to describe them, what terms to use. There was a long discussion about intersectionality and about whether you, you know, overtly position this through an intersectional

feminist lens and you know there was a long whole thing about that that you know so these things eventually came down to essentially footnotes or you know a descriptive passage to be inclusive but um they they took a lot of discussion because as you can imagine these are unsettled debates and uh so there's lots of different opinions and then when you send that out to the world the whole thing just goes like whoa you know it's massive work lara i'm i'm so grateful to you i have quite a lot of cognitive dissonance around this because i work in red school and i'm just surrounded by people who are just constantly talking about our menstrual cycles it's just so commonplace and then I'll forget I'll be out in

the world and I'll forget that I'm not in a red school and I'll start talking about what day I'm on or I had my period and then there's this oh there's just this oh my god she's like you can't say that and I just feel the shame all around and and it's um I imagine people listening experience a similar thing and I'm just so grateful to you for getting right in to the kind of right into the quagmire all all of this policy work um but I know you love it it's your it's a big passion for you I do I think it's really important but it's also hard yeah you know it and it's unpaid yes you know so this is a level of work that everybody is volunteering for some people are getting paid through their work or their union

but some people involved in on the panel who are in union some people are academics and it becomes part of their academic workload um but i'm a freelance academic now so you know it's just it's uh but but i think it's important and it needs people who've been in the field a long time and who understand that some of the ideas which are uppermost now might not necessarily be the ones that are going to last the test of time you know so I think it's important that that perspective is you know represented there so um yes it it's a privilege uh to be involved at that level for sure and I and I feel for everybody really who's in a sort of mature stage of life might be looking to sort of downgrade their workload a bit. And yet they've got a specialisation that, you know, they're passionate about, which is a wonderful thing. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not near retiring, but there's still a sense of, I suppose, you know duty which is good you know and it's what is so fantastic is

that I got into this young enough in a way to have spent you know a sort of working lifespan with some attention paying some attention and then full-time attention to it in the last 12 years um to be uh now society has changed enough that one can actually do something yeah so that would have i'm not sure that would have really felt possible when when i started out in it i had i mean i had a vision but uh it's it is kind of amazing to step back and go, wow. But then you still get those instances of you mentioned the word period and people go. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm getting that even now with this book coming out.

I've had a couple of people saying, you know, saying really, really negative things about it. Not too much yet, but there's bound to be some. You have to accept that some people just won't get it. And they'll think it's you know that you're talking about something that just should not be spoken about yes yeah tell us about the book the book so the book's called um reorganizing menstruation um and um menstrual innovations the subtitle is menstrual innovations and the redistribution of boundaries capitals and labor so it is an academic book but it's um it's a softened academic book i would say so hopefully it's fairly readable

um and what it does is it looks at what happens when menstrual practices change which has been happening over the last decade particularly and when menstruation as a topic enters the mainstream as something you can speak about and what's um what's both revealed and what's made possible when menstrual stigma starts to be disrupted um outside of the pockets where it's been being disrupted for a long time where it starts to become more mainstream. And so my sort of main argument, I suppose, is that it's a very mixed picture. So some menstrual innovations actually support a sort of neoliberal capitalist view of the person as a sort

of commodity and that commodities are the most important things and our relationship to things we own and buy and sell and that we're supposed to sort of be a sort of perfect performing liberal subject in the workplace so things like say you know tampons allow women to behave as if they're not menstruating yes so it creates a culture where the ideal is as if they're not menstruating. Yes. So it creates a culture where the ideal is a woman who's not menstruating. And so when you're not menstruating, you have to pass to use Shara Vostral's term as a non-menstruator. So you're constantly in denial of what's really happening. So that's an early innovation in menstrual practices that started in the 1930s, but really accelerated in the second half of the 20th century and then you get something newer like a menstrual cup and that then has sort

of you know a more complicated function in that it too disappears menstruation up to a point in that you can look like from the outside you look like you're not menstruating and in fact it's even better than a tampon because you can keep it in all day you're not bleeding a lot um and so you can i mean the women in the study i did on this reported how great it was that they could put their cup in before they went to work and then be at work all day not have to carry any menstrual product with them not have to be concerned about being you know know, having to change a product and then come home and then they would empty their cup and either, you know, use a pad at night or put the cup back in. So in a way, it's even better than a tampon

at disappearing menstruation. And it makes you behave even more like what we call a good neoliberal subject, you know, a good neoliberal woman who manages to conceal all the tricky bits of being female and goes to work looking sort of, you know, this kind of perfected state of a certain version of femininity, you could say. same time, the menstrual cup is actually deeply radical and subversive towards normative capitalist ideas about the female body, because you actually see your blood. You can't avoid actually seeing your blood in what has been an anaerobic environment. So no oxygen has contacted, you know, you pull it out and you see it and it's bright red or it, you know, it's very vivid and you see the consistency of it, which you don't see when it's absorbed into a tampon or pad. So then that changes your relationship with your body and with menstruation because it's like you're, apart from the fact that you own the product,

you're not constantly replacing the product. So you're not at the mercy of the advertising industry and all the symbolic violence around menstruation that happens through menstrual advertising and just constantly being tied into a disposable polluting product. So you own it, the thing itself. And then you also kind of own your blood as well because you get to actually see it. And then you can use it for fertilizing your plants or, you know, whatever. Some people have different uses for it or you can just wash it away, but you've got a much more direct relationship with it. And that's actually

very profound because the way we've been trained to relate to our blood have been the same as the way we've been trained to relate to our whole reproductive function and to the vulva and the vagina and everything that it's down there. You don't own it. It belongs to men and gynecologists, you know, that they'll see more of it than you ever will. And, and, and they'll tell you what you need to do with it and all of the stuff that goes along patriarchal control of the female reproductive system. And, and so instead you're, you've got this direct relationship, which I think is massive. I mean, I think a lot of people who go through Red School or any programme that introduces you to a deep level

of menstrual cycle awareness develops a different relationship with their menstrual blood. That's a key element of that work. And I think everyone knows how transformative that is. And then when you get the menstrual cup being sold in supermarkets, you know, being formalised and being on the one hand, this sort of perfect kind of better than a tampon way of disappearing it, but it's got this subversive side. And then I found the similar thing with menstrual workplace policies that on the one hand, they fit into a neoliberal idea about ideas about well-being and that it's really up to the individual to foster their well-being and that organisations will help them to do that. fit, you should be healthy, you should look good, you know, you shouldn't be carrying any extra

weight, you know, this sort of idea of, of the, you know, that this person who's ever sort of developing themselves into more and more perfection, which allies with the, you know, the well-being industry, which does get, I think, quite tainted by a sort of commodified view of reality and that you just buy this thing you know and use this thing it'll make you better and then everything will get better in your life and of course it's not that simple so on the one hand menstrual workplace policies fit into that well-being at work sort of bucket and it can often be all about what the woman needs to do and actually menstrual cycle awareness can be used in this as well like you should be paying attention all the time you should know where you

are in the cycle you know so any of these things can get co-opted into yeah an mca can get co-opted into that um being the perfect what did you say neoliberal yeah because you can go right well i am going to make sure i really rest at menstruation so i'm fully optimized exactly my inner summer energy to just hustle and nail it and yeah you can that can very easily happen yeah so just that word optimize put optimize and hack you know next to the menstrual cycle and you're you're behaving like, exactly, a way that neoliberal capitalism goes, yeah, great, you know. So, but on the other hand, a menstrual workplace policy is subversive to that idea that, you know, the world is all about capital. And all about, you know, that if you're making money, that makes anything you do OK. Basically, the whole deregulation and amorality of the current capitalist system in many parts of the world.

So it's actually subverts that by saying, no, there's actually an inherent value in the female body just as it is. And we are going to collectivise, which is a big thing when women come together, to say we're going to collectively claim our right to menstruate in the way we want to. And we want workplaces to adjust to us, not us adjusting to workplaces. That's that's really radical. Yes. So it's a combination of these two streams and being able to see what you're actually doing with the menstrual work that you're doing are you in fact unconsciously supporting a commodified material overly materialistic worldview or are you making that more humane you know are you actually making it

more about what human beings actually are and what they actually need. So I think that's really important at this juncture of the development of menstrual activism and menstrual awareness, because we can easily fall into dominant mindsets, especially when we're trying to make our work palatable. And I think that's when we saw a lot of these words like optimization started coming in, you know, because it makes your work more sellable in a capitalist, in a neoliberal capitalist marketplace. Yeah, I'm thinking of DEI educators too that I've heard say, I think it was an interview with Rashika Tulsian, I think, and she said, I'm no longer going to pitch my DEI workshops to corporations as if the organisation adopts a good DEI policy,

it will be more productive. She's like, I will no longer do that. And I can imagine mental educators thinking, if I can just get in with this organisation and do a workshop, and if I tell them that everyone's going to be much more productive, then they'll definitely say yes, and they'll pay me more for it yeah and we made that mistake initially with the coexist policy where we put it that way and the first draft of the policy said um that women had to they could take time off when they had their period and then they needed to pay it back at times of the month when they had more energy so that was what we had in the and the idea was exactly that that they'll be more productive at other times of the month and you see this narrative a lot and i see it now a lot

on linkedin and you know it's become very normalized this idea that women should be more productive at another time of the month if they take time off when they have their period but what the feedback we got was we haven't got time to pay back those hours. We'd rather come to work and limp through, you know, having period pain and, you know, taking painkillers and just sort of showing up and doing the minimum or whatever just to get through those first two days than have those two days off and then have to pay back two days in the middle of the month. It's like it doesn't make sense. And and and what we're seeing around the world is that policies that have come in like this like the spanish one you have to pay back the time i think um and in taiwan and various others where it's like well you're still going to work the same hours in a month as a man you know but you can have some time off when you've got your period if you want women are already working more than men right being paid less, far more hours than men and are paid less. So, you know, a lot of women are already doing two jobs because they're doing almost all

the childcare and the domestic labour, as well as working the same amount of hours as men in the workplace. So, and as the women at Coexist pointed out, they also do voluntary stuff too on top of it. So there was just nowhere to nowhere in the month to find this extra time. So we very quickly pulled that out and completely rewrote the policy so that it wasn't connected. We actually detached it from productivity and hours worked. So it was the amount of productivity during the month and the number of hours wasn't the point the point was that you were doing work at the time at the amount of work the amount of hours in the day or the the intensity of work or whatever that worked with your cycle and that you didn't have to ever pay anything back and so that meant that people

started to use the policy and that was tied into a contingency policy where there was always someone who could take over from you people didn't feel well some people it couldn't work with because there weren't enough people who could do what they did so that's obviously something that is difficult and a lot of a lot of jobs that's going to be the case so this is not a universal solution but the things like for example the front of house people who were the ones who suffered the most because when you're on a reception desk for example and you've got period pain you can't it's not like if you're in the back office and you just sit at your computer and you just work a bit slower um you've got this constant request from people it doesn't stop and you've got to be

perky and friendly and charming and all the things you don't want to be at that point in the month. And so by having a contingency policy that that was a job other people could take on, people could come from the back office to the front office to staff it if someone needed to go home because they just started their period and they had cramps. So that's actually those all have bringing those things together meant a workable policy but in those countries where it's a trade-off women aren't using the policies and now all the data's coming in saying well there's no point having a menstrual policy because nobody uses it but that's because the policy wasn't designed in a way that actually would be workable for people. If hearing Lara is inspiring you and you'd like to play a more active

role in this movement to create positive menstrual and menopause cultures at work and everywhere else in our world we invite you to visit menstruality leadership.com where you can find out more about Red School's leadership training. It's the world's first leadership training designed for change makers, nurturers, creatives to realize your full authority and leadership through the power of the menstrual cycle. The doors for our 2025 program have just opened. It would be wonderful to have you with us we're going to host a free webinar to explore how the menstrual cycle can support you to step into

leadership on july the 25th so you can register for that for free at menstrualityleadership.com and there'd have to be a huge culture shift to get it get it to a place where it is fully workable because it would be accepting as you said that a woman's body is valid as it is it would be accepting that being is as valuable as doing in a capitalist society which you know not so likely to happen but but I think that what does what has really helped it back to Covid again what we started with is the normalization of working from home so it you can still often I mean it might not be ideal from an MCA perspective but you can still work do some work on day one and two, but you're not having to get dressed, get made up, rush out the house, get your kids to school, whatever, be, you know, mad panic, rush, stress, public transport, to get to the workplace, be around other people

all day, have unexpected things happen, have people being difficult and you've got to suppress everything you're feeling to cope all of that. Instead, you stay at home in your PJs, you know, you go and lie down when you feel particularly like you need to. And you do a bit of work on the computer and it's not you're still doing something. Yes. And hopefully still getting paid the same amount, but you're not so stressed. So I think working from home has been an incredible boon, actually, for not only for menstruators, but also for just the idea of flexibility, that the workplace isn't something that you have to go to five days a week, nine till five. And I know I have, you know, male colleagues and acquaintances who also say that it's so much better for them to go in two or three days a week and not five and they actually get more done when

they work at home and they you know um just feel much better in themselves that they haven't had to do the whole commute especially those of us who aren't so extroverted who actually find being in a busy office all day every day extra tiring because of the extroversion involved can i just go back a step lara because there'll be people who don't know what the coexist policy is just a you know version of the story of that so coexist was an organization running um a large community hub in Bristol, in the centre of Bristolx Baxter to bring in a menstrual workplace policy. And it got quite a lot of press coverage, I remember. It got massive press coverage when it was first announced. It was very interesting. And I talk about this in the book that the idea of the policy was actually more interesting for the media than the actual policy

itself so when the when the policy was first mooted um and then alexandra came in and did a workshop on menstrual cycle awareness um with with the staff that you know introduction of the idea of a policy that one day workshop got a massive amount of publicity and was in all the mainstream papers. Oh my God, these people are thinking about doing a menstrual policy because it was clickbait. It was massive clickbait. So, you know, loads of people would come on going, oh my God, this is disgusting. You know, women don't have the right to this. So it was, and then lots of women saying, well, actually, hang on a minute. We do we do need something around this. It causes unnecessary problems.

So it and then when the policy actually was sort of matured, it took 18 months to really cook it because there was no template for it. So we had to really start at the beginning. And I came in as a pro bono consultant and then I researched it formally through my university so it yeah it was once the policy actually came in then it wasn't really so interesting anymore because it was an actual thing it shows how there's such a mixed influence of social media and people being able to comment on newspaper articles now. I call them newspapers. They're not really papers anymore. It's all digital, or mostly digital. But just that sort of commentary from everyone, that huge sort of

opinion universe that we've unleashed, that just often is a lot of people who don't really know much about what they're talking about, to be blunt, but for whatever reason want to have a say. So there's something very democratic about it. But is it actually effective? Is it positive in social terms? And it just seems at the moment we're in this sort of ghastly culture where media outlets are dependent upon clicks for, you know, getting capital in order to continue and pay their staff's wages. And the way you get clicks is really through a sort of lowest common denominator aspect of humanity, which is going

for the shock value in everything. So the shock value was in the idea of a menstrual workplace policy, but not in the actuality of it. Yeah. And then there are brilliant people like you who are actually getting these policies in place and getting them out there. And I'm so bloody grateful to you. Just briefly back to the book, and then I'd love to talk about menopause. So the book's coming out on August the 30th, but it's available for pre-order now. It is. It's being published by Oxford University Press. It's available worldwide. And it's available also through non-academic outlets

like Waterstones have it now and other, I think even WH Smith have got it on their website, something that really surprised me. So it's widely available. It's not cheap as academic books tend not to be, but it's not as expensive as I was concerned it might be so it's 40 pounds it's a hardback um and yeah so you know it's uh it'll be available I think there's a digital edition which will be cheaper and and and also an e-book so that I think that

maybe they're doing them as the same thing now. At one point it was slightly different. I'm not quite sure how that's going. But anyway, so it's available in multiple formats. And what's your hope for it? What's your vision for it? Well, you know, it's a funny thing with books, isn't it? They sort of have their own momentum. And this book's had quite a strong one

it sort of pushed me something anyway pushed me to do it during a time in my life where I really didn't have the energy for it both my parents were elderly and needed a lot of care and it was a difficult phase but somehow I managed to get the book done through it. And it just felt like this engine, even though I went to OUP, you know, which is sort of one of the top academic publishers in the world. And just that I had the nerve to do that felt like it was something else kind of, and that they, after a lengthy process that they took it on um first book they've published on menstruation uh since kutano's 1999 book is menstruation obsolete it's a book that said that um because paleolithic women only have 40 periods

so we should only have 40 periods so it's a really good idea to suppress your periods so that that they published that in 1999 then nothing nothing nothing and then mine which is kind of the opposite but um yeah so and they've been really supportive actually uh yeah they put it up for an award and now they've been really supportive so yeah we'll see we'll see you know books are a lot about timing you know on the one hand they're uh you know, they shape culture. But on the other hand, they're also shaped by culture or they're permitted by culture. When Her Blood is Gold came out, a lot of people were saying, oh, this is going to be really big because nobody's written anything like this before. And it's laying this new cultural ground and all of that.

But in fact, it didn't. It sold and it did of that but in fact it didn't it sold and it did get some reviews but it didn't sell particularly well in it you know because it was so far ahead of what the mainstream was doing and talking about so it became a kind of cult book over the years this one's a bit different and it's obviously speaking to a mainstream moment but there's still I still have regularly have experiences where people pull a face like they've just been made to eat a lemon when I talk about my books about so we'll see we'll see well I would love to maybe next August um I'll have read it and we'll see how it's landed in the world and we can have another on the podcast that would be great

right and I mean the amount of people who say to me my favorite book about this work is Her Brother's Gold by Laura Owen is it's a lot of people like that's the thing about books they stay they keep going that one's been amazing for that yeah it has it's really surpassed any expectations I might have had a bit that's why when you ask me what do you expect what do you want for the book I know it's um it's in a way you know some books not all books some books are more you know personal or whatever it's not that these books aren't personal but they're it feels like something that a bigger process than you is behind and you're the sort of vehicle for this idea going into the culture. And I mean, it's not I don't mean to be sort of ungrounded about that. Obviously, I did a huge amount of work for it and I actually wrote every word, you know, all of that.

But it's I as a human being, you know, I'm in my life, which is also about going shopping, you know, putting the bins out. You know, so a big part of my consciousness is taking up with the same mundanity that everybody is taken up with. Right. And then and then you have this bit of you which is doing something which is about something in the future, probably. Well, the book is always about something in the future future you're working on it for years and years and years and it's somehow that's what I mean about it has this engine that you are in a way keeping up with and part of what you're keeping up with is something in your own mind for sure but it doesn't feel personal it feels transpersonal maybe or I'm not describing this very well, but I'm trying to get at why I can't know what this book is going to do. Yeah, everything I'm nodding because everything you're saying makes sense to me.

I mean, I can imagine Alexandra and Sharni talking about it being your calling. Yes, yes, it is. Definitely. You can definitely use that language. Yes, it's a calling calling there's something sacred about it it's something that is bigger than yourself and that you are in service to I suppose is another way of putting it it does feel important to speak to menopause as well, both the experience of menopause, and I'd love to speak to you if we have some time about post-menopause phase at work. So what challenges are you seeing in your research and in your work around what's happening in

menopause at work? I know one of the things that you spoke about in an article I read is this climate of silence, which is similar to the climate of silence around menstruation. Well, I think that's changed a lot. And I think that we've gone further, got further with menopause than we have with menstruation. And I've got various ideas around that. One is that women at menopause have more authority in workplaces, they have more clout, so they can affect more change. Another is that employers see it as maybe a two-year period of time they've got to be concerned with whereas menstruation is scary because it's a long chunk of time do you really want to be giving people two days off a month for 30 years whereas giving people more flexi time and more accommodation for two years is a different thing.

The thing that is worrying is how, I suppose, how much the HRT narrative starts to infuse the workplace. And then this idea, the idea is, well, you just need to go on HRT. And you get workplaces telling female managers who are on HRT, telling staff that, well, you go to the doctor, get some HRT, and then you'll be able to basically perform at the same level and you won't get a hot flash in the middle of an important meeting or whatever so then we get this um you know just normalization of HRT as if uh there's a fix there's a quick fix and I see this being talked about a lot well the minute you start to experience any menstrual irregularity or perimenopausal, premenopausal symptoms, just go to the doctor and get on the medication. Just get the medication, take the medication, it's all solved. And it's not that simple. Apart from the fact that at the moment, the figures are something like 50% of women either shouldn't or won't tolerate HRT.

So it leaves out half of the workforce anyway. And those reasons are they've had some form of reproductive cancer already or they've got something in their family, family history, or they experience severe side effects on the pill um like they had anxiety and depression or whatever um or they just really don't want to take it like psychologically it's something that they feel strongly about so it would be um you know complicated for them to take it so and there are you know other reasons too but those are the main ones and so it's it that but the trouble is at the moment it's becoming the

only solution whereas for a while we would and we still are talking about that i mean this is in the bsi guideline is that there are other things you can do like have desk fans have workplaces where people can control the heat and you know the air conditioning so that if your you know temperature is going up and down you can actually have some control over the external temperature using natural fibers in uniforms which make it much less distressing if you if you sweat whereas if you're wearing all polyester or nylon it's excruciating you know to have a hot flush so things things like that which are very cheap well fairly cheap i mean the controlling your temperature can be more expensive depending on how the workplace has been built and designed but these are relatively cheap interventions and don't involve medical

procedures to come you know clinical practices to come into play and then there's also being more flexible about time so having some idea that you know women around that stage of their life would benefit from some kind of a sabbatical having more annual leave holiday leave that year or two years um or being able to work from home more or taking a step back from a position of responsibility with the proviso that they'll come back into it so that they're not their career is not going backwards it just might be on hold for a little while. So timing of promotions and that kind of thing. I feel like the world can learn from academia here too, because there is the tradition in academia of having a sabbatical. And actually someone in our community is, she is timing her sabbatical, her academic sabbatical to go with just when she's

reaching the point of menopause where everything in her is saying you need space yes and yeah I wonder how that could be translated yeah without loss of income because one of the issues for women now is because we're having children later yeah you can get caught in a care sandwich where you've got teenage children or in some cases even younger than that children, who still need a lot of care and attention, and elderly parents at the same time, and you're going through menopause. So just at the time when you need to be really engaged in self-care, you're actually split between your job and two generations, generation on either side needing care. So it's, you know, it's a whole lot easier going through

menopause if you you know if you have children at the biological the prime biological age for having children you know in your early 20s then they're out the house by the time you go through menopause but we're not doing that now so that's um you know an extra uh complication what was your question again how do we set up a situation where workplaces understand that that sabbatical is necessary oh right yes huge extension of the menstrual leave question yes it is but i think it's partly also understanding that we're living and working for longer yeah so it used to be that a lot of women would you know they'd they'd either not be in work outside the home or they'd be in part-time work and when they went through menopause they'd often drop that part-time work or they'd be working at home so they just would be able anyway to rest

in the afternoon or you know they'd have more control over their work and they might have a couple of years where they weren't as active or you know or whatever and yet and now we've got far more women who are working outside the home so they don't have so much control um and so i think it's partly that we have to understand that shift and that and that because we're then living longer, so 50s was seen as already getting old, and that, you know, your husband would be retiring, your retirement age was 60 then. So you're in your early 50s going through menopause, you're looking at maybe working for six or seven years longer, which isn't doesn't seem like very long. So you might just

think, well, I'm not going to go for a promotion. I'm just going to tread water really. And I'll carry on doing the job I'm doing, but I'm not going to create any waves or do anything new. I'll just plod along and then I'll retire at 60 on a full pension and whatever. And then your husband would be retiring. This is in the UK five years later. But now we're all retiring in our late 60s, if we retire getting a pension, but then many of us are carrying on working, and people are carrying on working well into their 70s. So if you look at that from the age of 50, you've got 25 or 30 years, you're still working. So to see it then as like in the middle of the working phase of your life say say it's going from 20 you know to 75 or

80 I mean my you know my mum gave her last public talk when she was 83 wow you know at 83 she said you know what it makes me too tired now I'm going to stop she wasn't formally working but she was doing a lot of volunteer stuff you know right until then so she was active and it you know and our generations the generations coming up now are going to maybe even go longer than that so if you see it as a time span from 20 to 80 of being active in the public sphere one way or another and that 50 is in the middle of that so that's when you take two years out and then you come back and then you've got the opportunity to really move forward and be a you know a great service to your community uh because also you you know your children have pretty much grown up by that point um and you know you may have escaped the care sandwich one way or

another but you've got a long period of time. You know, I did my PhD in my early 60s and that's unusual, but it's becoming more and more people are doing it. It's not completely out of left field now. And it was the absolutely best time for me to do it. I was so well prepared for it. I knew exactly what I wanted to study. I knew what needed to happen in the field that I was so well prepared for it. I knew exactly what I wanted to study. I knew what needed to happen in the field that I was in. And I was so motivated because it was such a fantastic opportunity. So I just ate the whole thing up. I absolutely loved every minute of it. You know, it was absolutely fantastic. So, you know, you're able to do things differently than you would have been

before. And, you know, I wasn't distracted by things that are happening between the ages of 20 and 50. You know, I wasn't distracted by my love life or by, you know, being pregnant or all of that stuff, you know, was not taking my attention and energy. So I could completely devote myself to doing it, which was, you know, just fantastic. So there's a lot to be said for the postmenopausal years. Yeah. So back to this postmenopausal zest, which you said that you wanted to touch on, that we need to be making the most of this period in our lives when we are in this next level of maturity, authority and contribution, really. Yes. And what we don't know, and this is a controversial thing to say, but what we don't

know is how HRT affects that. Yeah. So, I mean, I one of the reasons I didn't take HRT is partly because obviously I was sort of interested in living as naturally as possible, but also because I had a really bad time on the pill and I became anxious and depressed on the pill. So I thought, well, exogenous hormones and me just don't work very well. But we just haven't got any data really on how the impact that being on HRT has on your sense of personal strength and well-being. So the dominant narrative is that it improves all that because you're not having your menopause

symptoms. But if the pill causes women to feel, as many people say, not like themselves and to have even, you know, subclinical levels of anxiety and depression what is the long-term effect of taking exogenous hormones after menopause um you know over a long period of time the medical advice is not to take it forever but many women are taking it forever and a lot of those are clearly having very powerful postmenopausal phases of their lives, of their careers. They're very visible. They're very confident. So maybe it doesn't have any kind of a negative impact. And maybe it really is that there's different types of people. And for some people, they'll have amazing postmenopausal zest without taking any HRT.

And for other people, it will be with HRT. We just don't know yet. Again, it comes back to data. Yeah. I mean, obviously, anecdotal evidence has a place and knowing who you are and what is likely to suit you or not suit you is really important. So I don't want to say that you won't have that with HRT. But I don't think it's just a silver bullet that necessarily solves everything. Yeah. So if listeners are loving listening to you, how can they connect with you? How can they connect with your work? So I have a website. It's very easy to remember. It's LaraOwen.com. And I teach a course in contemporary menstrual studies which is going to start its second year

of the course next year so I've been running the year one since 2022 so I've had 55 people go through the program so far it's a year-long master's level course It's pretty intense and it gives you a grounding across disciplines in what we know about various aspects of menstruation and a bit about menopause. And then the, so I'm starting year two concurrently with the next year one in March next year. Enrolment will open on October the 1st and we are already accepting expressions of interest. So you can use the contact button on the website if you're interested in applying for year one. Year two will only be available for people who've already done year one. And year two is going to drill down more into specific aspects, like there'll be a unit on

a module on endometriosis, there'll be a module on trauma in the menstrual cycle, there'll be various different, there'll be a module on menopause. And what you'll get is, you'll get to read the most influential and the, you know, a wide representation of the academic papers. So you get given those to read. And you'll get a couple of discussions, two seminars per module. And in the first year, you do a research project, which is guided by me. So it's your research project, obviously, but I help you with it. So it's a master's level, as I think I said. And yeah, I'm so happy with how it's gone. It's really just fantastic to be able to teach at that level. And of course, that's not happening in any universities yet.

So that's why I'm doing it myself through the website. It's a bridge for people who do want to do PhD study. It's serving as a bridge there. Yes, exactly. So it prepares you for doing a PhD or menstruation. And sometimes people are doing a PhD already, but their supervisors aren't specialists in menstruation because there's not enough of those yet. And so it helps them write their lit review and all of that. There is a big shift happening

though. So I was just at the Menstruation Research Network. This is a network that 12 of us set up in 2018. And we just had a conference um our annual conference in liverpool and there were so many people there doing phds on menstruation it was just amazing you know in 2018 it was like one or two people i mean when i started mine in 2016 it was the first time someone had done a phd in a business school on menstruation. And now it's just so many people. It's phenomenal. So the field is accelerating. And a good proportion of those people are coming in through Red School as well. So they're doing the Red School training and then they're going, you know what, I want to really get some, do more research on this. And I want to explore this particular

avenue. So there's a sort of steady infiltration of people who've got a high level of menstrual cycle awareness coming into academia. So that's really interesting. But also check out my website for I do occasional webinars on different topics, which anybody can join without the commitment of the long course. Thanks for asking, Sophie.

Yeah, you're so welcome. And I just want to thank you again. I said this at the end of our first conversation, but thank you for sticking at this for all the years that you have and for how you are shaping and changing the field and changing things for all of us. You know, on behalf of all the listeners,

so grateful to you, Lara. And yeah, look forward to speaking to you again soon. Yeah. Thanks, Sophie. Thank you. Bye. Thanks for being with us all the way through to the end today. If you've really loved hearing Lara, we have two more episodes with her that you might like to listen to. Episode 52, The Cultural Story of the Taboo, Power and wisdom of menstruation. And 72, following intuition,

taking retreat and finding your path in menopause. It's just wonderful being with someone who has been in this field for so long doing such amazing work. So thank you again, Lara. And that's it for this week. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.