Workplace Menopause Rights: What Women (and Employers) Need to Know

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Just what are your workplace menopause rights? Or if you are the boss, the founder, the upper management, what should you be doing as an employer? As a woman in midlife or one who employs her, it is important to know that menopause matters in the workplace. It's more than just a health issue. It's a matter of rights, voice, empowerment in the workplace., and there are things that you can do to protect yourself and be an advocate. More ahead in this episode. I have two guests with me today, two lawyers. In fact, first of all, I have Jack Tuckner, Esquire. He is a women's rights expert and a workplace attorney and founding partner of Tuckner Sipser. Weinstock and Zipzer LLP, a New York-based law firm dedicated to workplace gender rights. With over 20 years of experience, Jack advocates for working women at all stages in their reproductive life cycle, from pregnancy through menopause. His practice focuses on combating sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, illegal gender pay disparity, sex discrimination, Maternity Leave Matters, Unlawful Retaliation, and Wrongful Termination. Jack served as an advocate and commentator on women's discrimination issues across the media spectrum, including New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper, The Joy Behar Show, National Public Radio, CNN, Inside Edition, and numerous local television and radio stations. And at civic and grassroots community meetings and seminars throughout the New York tri-state area. Katherine Kreider, Esquire, was admitted to the California Bar in 2015. In addition to being a lawyer, Katherine is an active labor and postpartum doula, helping families. When she's not working with families one-on-one, she teaches childbirth education and postpartum classes for new parents. Across the United States. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Katherine worked with parents and children in a variety of roles as a licensed elementary and special educator. Katherine also writes for websites on women's health and parenting-related topics. Materials she's produced can be found on Forbes.com, Healthline.com, and Education.com. This, of course, is a slight deviation from our normal health and muscle and bone density and fall prevention and longevity beneficial information. However, it is directly related to the health and to the symptoms that a midlife or menopausal woman will suffer, and shedding light on something many of you did not know even existed. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and an international speaker to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Hello to both of you. So welcome, Katherine Kreider, and welcome to Jack Tuckner. Thank you both for being here. And we talked about this in the green room, a bit of a deviation from what we normally talk about, and yet so very relevant. I'm surprised we've not talked about it sooner. And I cannot wait to unpack this. But before we do dive into what is it, what does it look like, how does it happen, and what can we do to protect ourselves, let's define it. What does menopause discrimination in the workplace look like?

Well, thank you, Debra. Menopause discrimination looks like if when a woman is treated differently during the— this— these two bookend stages of women's reproductive life, perimenopause and menopause, and they're treated differently as a result of the perception that they're not, for example, managing their tasks as well as they should, or they're not accorded flexibility during this timeframe, which they should be because it is perimenopause and menopause often affects major life activities, so-called. These are the definitions under the Americans with Disabilities Act and affect major bodily functions such as your endocrine system. And under the Americans with Disabilities Act, that entitles employees to an interactive process, cooperative dialogue with their employer, and flexibility in what's known as reasonable accommodations. So if someone is being managed out for performance based on symptoms that are occurring as a result of menopause, that is menopause discrimination, which is also, by the way, an intersectional— so-called intersectional claim because it's occurring to only women, and women typically who are 40-plus, even though I know there are many cases that are women who are earlier onset for many reasons. But when it does occur, the average age is well above 40. When it occurs at 40, age discrimination is also a thing. That's the age in the United States that we're all protected, 40, under the law. And disability. So it is known as a sex-plus claim, sex plus another category. So women have rights even though we don't talk about these things. And it's also not yet embodied in the law. This is something that we were going through, Katherine and I, in our firm, although it was long before Katherine's time. For the last 25 25 years, Debra, we have been representing, advocating for, and litigating cases of pregnancy discrimination. And prior to last year, 2023, there was no specific law that said pregnancy is a protected status in the workplace. So we had to do just what we're doing with menopause now. We had to connect the dots for employers and their lawyers and say, wait a minute, like everything that happens with women's health in the United States, it's a, like, second-class type of citizenship. We don't honor it the way we would it if men could get pregnant., we would have a fully paid Family and Medical Leave Act of 12 months. Right. And meanwhile, it's still all unpaid. And if men's andropause symptoms were like women's menopause symptoms, right, we'd have hormone spas in workplaces and retreats for men to deal with these things. So while we're working on this, Katherine and I and the EEOC and actually a congresswoman now, we're working on the Menopause Workers Fairness Act modeled after the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. What we are here to talk about is how, and this is something that most people don't really realize, but if you are suffering symptoms that are affecting your ability to sleep, sleep is a major life activity. Insomnia, right? The significant symptom of menopause. Instead of allowing yourself to simply get managed out or put on a performance improvement plan, we were on Katherine Ryan and her podcast the other day, and I read the direct message from a woman on, sent this to me on LinkedIn saying, My 35-year-old male boss just put me on a performance improvement plan because I'm not able to manage tasks, and I didn't even realize that I was in perimenopause, and these are the reasons why, and now I'm starting to— I'm going to lose my job. So before that happens, if women request accommodations for those things, that request is considered protected activity under federal law, and you're— they're not allowed to retaliate against you, and they have to engage in a dialogue with you to determine what basic modest accommodations might you need that Katherine can speak to. But this is why we have to sort of stand up and normalize these two stages of natural stages of a woman's reproductive life in order to get where we're going with this. It's trending, Debra, right? It's everywhere.

Menopause is everywhere, right? Yeah, we're calling it the menopause gold rush when it comes to, you know, marketers are producing something, but actually we're hearing about it. I would say longevity or menopause are the two words of 2024. It's what we've seen. So, Katherine, I would love to hear what are modest accommodations, what falls under that category.

Yeah. So actually, this ties in a bit to your first question as well, which is what does menopause discrimination look like? Right. So I'll bring up one case that we've seen, which is these schoolteachers who— there are several of them going through menopause right now. They actually had the air conditioning window units taken out of their classroom. These are people with hot flashes, who now don't have AC units in warm weather in their classroom. An easy accommodation is to return their window units to them. So it doesn't have to always look crazy. For people who are experiencing sleep insomnia, like Jack was mentioning, that's a common symptom. If you're experiencing that and unable to do your best work at certain times of day, the accommodation might just be shifting the hours to a little later in the day. It could require more breaks and just varying your work hours according to that. For some individuals experiencing bone and muscle pain, it could mean, you know, the allotment of a chair when normally maybe they would have to stand to do certain tasks. So it's not that menopause accommodations have to look crazy or immediately outside the box. It's just meeting people's needs where they are is what I would say.

I want to ask this question about the, say, United Kingdom. Europe versus the United States. Where are we? And what I want to ask, the phrase I want to ask, the leading question is how far behind are we?

We're way behind. Yeah, we are. We're, first of all, we're dead last when it comes to things that we don't have. The United States, you know, as the profit-over-people-based nation that we are, we are the only, Debra, the only country left in the industrialized, some call it civilized, sort of first world that doesn't have offer paid maternity leave to its workforce. The only other countries are Papua New Guinea and Swaziland and the like. So when it comes to things such as women's protective issues, we are dead last. And certainly while much of the world on menopause is not doing much better, the UK certainly is. Australia is, they're way ahead of us. So, and because anything that requires spending money, whether it's paycheck fairness, the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would normalize pay for women who were still earning less than men across the board has been moldering in Congress since 1997. One party votes against it. It's the same way that when it comes to union rights or employee rights or the minimum wage, one party votes against it time and again. And listen, I just want to say this because it's an important thing, because it's all of the piece, menses through pregnancy, through menopause. Pregnancy, I used to have cases where women would get fired when they would say to the employer, you know, I'm pregnant, I just want to find out about maternity leave. And the employer would say to them, well, wait a minute, when's your due date? And they would tell them, and the employer would say, if your baby is born on that date, you will not have worked here for a full year. And the woman says, well, yeah, what's your point? Well, the point is that the Family Medical Leave Act requires a full year of employment before a baby is born. For the birth or adoption of a baby. And so the company would say, and the company's lawyers would say this to me, so how is she entitled to maternity leave? Pregnancy's not a disability. And we would have to argue that, what are you talking about? Pregnancy doesn't have to be, isn't a disability. Now it's a protected status since last June, 2023, with the enactment finally of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which is the Americans with Disabilities Act for pregnant women. It makes pregnancy protected status throughout one's gestational life cycle. It makes lactation is a pregnancy-related medical condition, and you have to be allowed to express milk for a year postpartum in your workplace in a private, non-bathroom space. And it's all kinds of other goodies. The sister act that was enacted at the same time, the Pump Act, providing urgent maternal protections for nursing mothers. That's what I'm talking about with lactation. Abortion, miscarriage, all now protected. And according to the EEOC, menopause, because it's a reproductive-related medical condition, a natural biological process, it should be included under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It's all the reproductive life cycle. But we had to work. We had to, like, it was like pulling teeth to get our legislatures and our companies to understand that pregnancy is not like they used to always say, well, it's elective. Why should we have to accommodate you for something that you've chosen to do on your own? Right? Nuts. And so until we explained that it was a sex-based— when you give birth, you are disabled for a period of time. Even insurance companies acknowledge that. So the long story short is women are now— it's the best time ever. That was the landmark legislation, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP Act, that may be the last two pieces of women's rights legislation we now see for a long time. But As I think I mentioned before the show, Katherine and I and a Democratic congresswoman and couple of OB-GYNs and the EEOC are drafting a Menopause Workers' Fairness Act based on that foundation in the Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act, because the language is essentially the same. And why shouldn't women throughout their— especially when they're at the top of their game, which is what's happening in perimenopause and menopause— why should they not be acknowledged and be afforded and accorded menopause protections? Menopause absentee policies is what they have in England, accommodations, whether it has to do with attire for those who have to wear heavier uniforms or just break times or of the myriad symptoms of menopause, just a little flexibility when they need it. Anxiety, anything related. In New York City, by the way, this is all already protected because we have such a progressive statute. It protects any kind of impairment. But what we're saying here, this is the headline. Even now, perimenopause and menopause symptoms, even before the Menopause Workers' Fairness Act Act, listen, I just wanna say the new incoming chair appointed by the president-elect is against all of these things. She voted against including menopause in the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act ambit. She wants to delete abortion, maternity, gender equality from all regulations, federal law, et cetera. And it goes on and on. So we're facing headwinds now, but here's the deal for anyone despite their political persuasion. When you are employed for an employer with at least 15 employees, because that's the threshold, 15 under federal law in all 50 states. When you're going through a difficult period, perimenopause or menopause, first important to get a diagnosis from a menopause-aware practitioner, as I'm sure you always speak about, because many OB-GYNs, even this woman who wrote to me, said it was dismissed as being depression when she first saw it. You know, from her PCP. Well, once you have that diagnosis in hand, and it is a diagnosis, it's a medical condition related to women's reproductive life, you can then seek from your employer flexibility. And the dual benefit of that is when you're asking for it, as I mentioned earlier, it's a protected civil rights invocation. It's like saying to your employer, as a woman of a certain age with this current temporary disabling issue, I'm entitled to flexibility and to not be punished or written up or fired. I need you to hook me up. And the reason I need you to hook me up again is because as a woman who's probably over 40 and who's experiencing symptoms that either affect a major life activity like sleeping, thinking, walking, working, eating, or a major bodily function, almost always Included in that is the endocrine system with the wild fluctuations of the diminishment of estradiol, exogenous hormones, right? Endogenous hormones. You're entitled to an interactive process. That's a legal term, but it just means a cooperative dialogue, a conversation with your employer. And unless your employer can say to you, it would be an undue hardship on us to give you that, which is not easy for the employer to say and prove, they have to provide it. And if they treat you worse as the result of the request, it's illegal retaliation. So it's empowering to know this, just like the 10 teachers that we're representing. What we told those teachers that they needed to say stayed the hand of management. The management no longer— they're still deciding whether they're going to give them back air conditioners, but we will sue them if they don't. The school district doesn't seem to understand that they're entitled to it. And it's a— how reasonable is that accommodation? Air conditioners in the summer months? I'm sorry to go on and on. I don't know whether You know, I'm losing you.

No, you're not at all. I think you're really embellishing and amplifying the situation here. Katherine, is there anything that you want to add or contribute to that thought before I ask another question? Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders, That's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein— and don't forget the fiber They kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at Flipping50.com today.

I think that it's important for people to recognize that these protections are out there because the word menopause isn't specifically mentioned in a lot of the laws. So if you do go to your employer or you do go to a lawyer, some of them might say, well, we don't see how you are protected. But the truth is, is that you are if you dig a little deeper and if you connect the dots. And I think that people need to just realize that because it can be really discouraging if you're experiencing strong menopause symptoms, it's impacting your work, and then people are telling you you have no protections.

Yeah, agree. And I think so what we're hearing really echoes The exact same thing. And Jack alluded to this, that we have to be advocates for ourselves in the medical realm when we're working with physicians who may not know. We have to do it for anybody listening when you're working with a health coach or a trainer who may not have had adequate training. They've had basic certifications or degrees. They didn't get any training. So it's not their fault. It's going to become, I think, all of our fault as we We're trying to shout these things from the rooftops, but we've got to be advocates for ourselves. So what would you say, Katherine? What are the steps? We have somebody listening, for instance, right, who is feeling like she needs job accommodations due to menopause symptoms she's dealing with. She knows this is disrupting her regular performance, the reason she's gotten kudos or praise or, you know, promotions or the position she's got. And she most likely is, you know, it's not something she talks about openly and out loud yet. What would you suggest are her first steps?

Great question. I think the first thing to do is you need to make it known what's going on to management, HR, whoever the higher-ups at the organization might be, because they can't be held accountable if they don't know, right? If it truly just is your work is falling apart, like they have a right to talk to you about that, to try and help you to improve. So you do need to let them in on the fact. And that's where you were talking about advocacy is really important because we definitely recognize it can be hard to have conversations where you tell your employers, I'm going through menopause right now, or I'm in perimenopause, this is impacting. So as a result, It's really like that step one is advocating for yourself to HR or your boss, letting them know what's going on so they can be held to the standard of knowing, right? Step one. Then we have to enter into that dialogue that Jack was talking about, which is where we actually say, hey, there's something going on here in my life. I need you to meet me partway with accommodation. What can we do together? To make this work. And there are many employers in this world who have good hearts and want to meet you partway. And that'll be all you have to do is express it to your boss. They'll meet you partway. You'll find a great accommodation. It'll be short-term while you experience whatever menopause symptoms you have, and you'll be ready to go forward after that. And it'll be great. Now, in some situations, and unfortunately, these are the ones where Jack and I tend to get brought in, your boss is going to fight back and they're going to say, no, you're not protected because of that, or I don't understand why we should care about these symptoms. And in those situations, that's where it's really important to have the written documentation Jack was talking about. So make sure you have your menopause-aware provider writing notes saying that you have signs of menopause or perimenopause, that these are symptoms you're reporting to them that experiencing that's in line with what they know about medically. Get those notes, get— document all your conversations at work. So make sure you're sending emails being like, hey, on such and such a date, it was really nice to touch base with you. You said this, I said this. Get it in writing, because then when you come to someone like Jack or I, we can be like, great. Because we don't want to fully escalate all the way right away, right? We just want to send an email to your boss being like, hey, in case you weren't aware, like, there are protections So-and-so invoked those protections by telling you about their menopause and by asking for accommodations. And now, like, let's discuss how we get that for them. That's obviously not the dream scenario. I'd love it if your boss just worked for you on your own. But if you are receiving pushback, that's the next step.

Wow. What would you say to employers who are here and whether that's, you know, somebody who's the owner, the founder of their own business, or their managing CEO, how can the employers optimally support women going through menopause? Because for anybody who here is an employer or who hopes to take this maybe to their management, their upper management, and share this, this isn't going to go away. This is, if anything, it's going to get louder and broader, and it will be much more of an open conversation no matter what someone may think right now. What's the best way for employers to be proactive in doing this?

Well, employers would know what— it's not in their interests in general, they think, because they just go, it's another thing that's going to cost us money, just like they were opposed from the start to anything to do with pregnancy and pregnancy protections. But employers lose in this country billions of dollars a year on loss of top talent, women who self-exile when they kind of can't stand the heat, literally and figuratively, and feel sort of depressed about what's going on, or they're terminated for performance, for issues they haven't raised. So it's in an employer's best interest to retain top talent and to retain top women talent in order to have a more equitable workforce. And besides the notion of inclusivity and diversity, Katherine and I certainly agree that organizations need more women in leadership. And this is the way you retain them. So it's in your best interest to do so. But again, we don't— we're representing employees. So I normally don't take that. I'm not advising employers on what they should do. Although it's not going away. And should we remain, Debra, a constitutional republic and a democracy, it's not going away. I mean, we will, this bill, if not in this current form, will eventually pass the Menopause Workers' Fairness Act. And the uptick of what women are demanding now, which is why we have to demand it, normalize it, we're going to get there. You know, I don't know if it would be helpful. I don't know if we have just time. It's up to you. Just as a concrete thing, if I even read this DM to show if you're going through this, to kind of tie it together what Katherine was saying about how you're protected. Because the other piece of this is that what about people who are thinking, well, what about if they say no? What about if they're not willing to work with me? But then if the marriage, so to speak, can't be saved between you and your employer, you want to be in a position where your employer is going to want you to sign a general release of claim, they're going to pay you severance. So for those who say, I don't want, you know, we always say to people, first of all, don't quit. Don't quit. Hashtag don't quit ever. Because when you quit, not only are you throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak, but you won't even get unemployment benefits. And then you're just throwing yourself on your sword. It's horrible. So instead of quitting, how about if you oppose, if you fight, if you stand up for yourself, step up, Speak truth to power, tell them what time it is. And then if they're not prepared to be educated, because many are, I think Catherine was alluding to this, many realize they scratch their heads and go, wow, like we're in dangerous territory. We find that all the time. But if they don't, if they fire you or are thinking about put you on a performance improvement plan and you've raised these issues, they're going to want to pay you money so that you leave quietly and sign an NDA. I mean, this is what makes the, this is what, where the rubber meets the road. I mean, this is what we do. So we would much rather our clients get the protection, get the attention that they deserve and need. But when it doesn't work out, don't you want to be able to be in a position to say, you know what, I held them accountable. I'm making it better for the women who come after me. And you know what, now I have a buffer. I have some money and unemployment benefits that I've negotiated to help me get to the next position. That's part of this entire conversation.

Empowerment.

Yeah, very valuable. Yeah. And any other major differences or similarities with the work around the pregnancy discrimination versus menopause discrimination?

Well, I'm sorry. I mean, the difference is that pregnancy— the first of all, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. So think of it this way. We have the Civil Rights Act that was enacted in '64, 1964. It made sex discrimination illegal. Pregnancy Discrimination Act was '78, 1978. Pregnancy discrimination was rampant. It still was. It still is. But that's because there were loopholes in the law. And that was what the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act— we don't have time to go into all this, but that's what it was designed to plug, those loopholes and all of those problems and deficiencies in the language. So pregnancy now, the difference is pregnancy is specifically protected now. It's a protected status. It's like race, color, ethnicity, sex, age. Pregnancy is one of them. Menopause is not yet one of them. So the workaround is to say, yeah, but hello, it's only— I still have disabling. And again, it's right there in the law. The Americans with Disabilities Act protects menopause and perimenopausal symptoms. What are we missing? They just don't want to hear that, right? Because historically it was like, well, it's just women going through a natural life stage. It's not a bona fide disability. Well, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 changed all that. I'm sorry if companies aren't immediately jumping to say, we've got your back, sister. They're not. So we have to stand up and say, do you see what we're saying? That's what— it's always been this way through pregnancy and menopause. We have to say to them, dudes, we're going to sue you unless you understand that my client is protected. So before you get to lawyering up, really all you have to know is your symptoms are protected. You're protected because you're a woman of a certain age or a woman of a certain stage, as my colleague Lauren Sheeran, you know, coined that phrase. Women of a certain age with disabling symptoms are entitled to the same type of accommodations that you would have if you had long COVID or you had a heart attack or you broke your leg skiing and you couldn't commute to work for a while or you needed time off to recuperate. It's the same thing. So we just have to get beyond that hump of saying, yeah, but the way culture does. Yeah, but. It's elective, like with pregnancy. By the way, pregnancy— not every woman goes through pregnancy. Every woman, if she lives long enough, is going to go through perimenopause and menopause. It's 20% of the workforce of 45 to 64-year-old women.

Well, for a listener right now, whether she is or she isn't struggling, but she feels very strongly about supporting this and making sure that it comes to light, and she's an advocate for other women and potentially younger women in her life, making it better, how can she get involved? Where could she learn more? What could be her next step if it's not an action that she needs to take about herself in her workplace?

Well, I think that one thing it's really important to realize just in general, and this goes back to your question about what employers can do, is that we need to have workplaces where these conversations can be had that are safe to have these conversations in. And so creating workplaces where people are willing to talk about it. So if you're going through perimenopause or menopause yourself, Talking about it, normalizing some of the symptoms can go a really long way in opening the roads for others, right? You might not be able to be talking to Congress about this, but you can be talking about it in your workplace. And there's many menopause associations that you can be joining and doing volunteer work with them if that's something that interests you. So there's lots of opportunities, but sometimes it's just as simple as creating a village where you are. And helping people to join that. So yeah, that would be a big piece of advice I would have for people.

I mean, if you— I don't know, if you Google Menopause Workers' Fairness Act, there's a number— there are a number of writings on that these days. Also, if you— you know, I'm on— Katherine and I are on LinkedIn. I've spent a lot of time with newsletters now and videos, lives that we've been doing talking about all of this. I do it on TikTok as well. Our website is womensrightsnyc.com. You're not going to find too much other information on it because Really, frankly, we were the ones that started about a couple of years ago raising these issues. When I first raised it as a video on TikTok, it had, for me, like it went viral. It shows there's such hunger for it. It had 60,000 views. And basically there was a lot of this like, WTF, like, what? I'm covered? I didn't even know that. I shouldn't have quit my job 2 years ago. Or I wouldn't have known that if I only knew. And we used to hear that about pregnancy. Isn't it a shame that when it comes to women's issues, I mean, there was a case in Georgia recently where a woman in perimenopause bled, had excessive bleeding as a symptom and bled onto her work chair, was written up, had another incident a month later, bled onto their floor. She was fired for not being hygienic enough. And then this was in Georgia. She went to court, she lost. The ACLU appealed it. Finally it settled. It is— it's going to take some doing, but like anything else that matters in civil rights, it's always been this way. We have to keep charging up the hill, even if sometimes we— you know, it's like the myth, the myth of Sisyphus. You just keep pushing that boulder up the hill. Doesn't it make sense that everything to do with a woman's reproductive life cycle now, especially the This is the reason why we were so emboldened. This is the reason why two Democratic congresswomen are working with us on this bill, because the Pregnancy— the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act established the framework for this. It talks about related medical conditions to pregnancy and anything else to do with reproduction. So how are we excluding, again, the last two stages of women's— of a woman's life, woman's reproductive life? Right. It's the It's like it's pregnancy at the end stages, at the end of, right, menses, right? So, you know, the definitions, I'm sure you're always talking about it. So for the year, well, it doesn't really matter. Perimenopause and menopause are protected is the point, is the upshot.

Amen. And thank you both for the work that you're doing here. And thank you for being here and for your time. Where can listeners follow you? I know, Jack, you mentioned you're both on LinkedIn. Do you want to mention those accounts and mention, you mentioned a URL if there's a best place to follow?

Well, Katherine and I are our names, Jack Tuckner, T-U-C-K-N-E-R, and Katherine Kreider, C-R-I-D-E-R, on LinkedIn. We're also, our URL is womensrightsnyc.com, women's rights, and then, and, and then Y for New York. That's where we're based. Katherine's in California. We cover a lot of ground, but the firm's office is based in New York City and upstate New York. Where else? You know, we're on all, all the social media accounts. And again, you could reach out, you could ask us questions at info@womensrightsny.com. It's always best, by the way, to look for an employment lawyer for counsel if you need it while you're working. By the way, if you're going through this now, just like that, this woman who DM'd me, she was in New York City. If you're going through it, best to talk with a lawyer, an employment lawyer in your jurisdiction, in your city or state. But I'm conceding there's not that many employment lawyers that kind of know too much about this. So we've been helping people in other states, especially if they're still working and they just need the support. So just, you know, feel free to ask us questions and we would say be diligent and realize that don't give up. Don't give up on yourself and don't give up when you feel hopeless, especially going through these difficult transitional stage. And by the way, I don't know if you must talk about this, but finding a, like on the Menopause Society's website, the Menopause Foundation, there are a list of menopause certified in AWARE practitioners nationwide. One should consult with one to understand exactly what's going on, right? I'm not telling you anything and your listeners probably don't know.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So good.

Yes.

And thank you so much again for your time. It's been very insightful. And to everybody listening, I hope you're feeling and walking away from this, literally while you're hiking and exercising, but you're walking away feeling empowered about not only the situation right now and what is true and what is possible, but what's coming and what's getting even better in the future for those women come behind us. Thank you again, both of you.

Thank you for having us.

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