Do Hot Flashes Get the Cold Shoulder? Menopausal Symptoms and Disclosure Influence Leader Ratings

Middle-aged working women may be poised to enter leadership roles at the same time they enter the menopausal transition. Unfortunately, menopause is assumed to evoke stigma and bias work judgments; however, this assumption is untested. We apply the stigma process model (Link & Phelan, 2001) to predict that if menopause carries stigma, identifying a woman as menopausal constrains her from leadership due to unfavorable stereotypes. In Study 1, three workplace meeting scenarios manipulated menopausal identification: a middle-aged woman without symptoms, with prototypical “hot flash” symptoms, and with symptoms disclosed as menopausal. As expected, hot flash symptoms reduced leader potential ratings due to lower judgments of her agency compared to no symptoms and increased the gender disparity in leader ratings. Unexpectedly, disclosing the symptoms as menopausal increased agency and leader potential ratings compared unlabeled symptoms. Study 2 offered a constructive replication and explored different explanations for this finding. Disclosure functioned as a compensatory agentic act, overriding the low agency stereotype; simply identifying her symptoms as menopausal did not have the same benefit. Participant gender and gender context ratio did not change these conclusions. We conclude that hot flash symptoms carry physical stigma that biases decisions and contributes to gender disparities, but disclosing they are menopausal overrides the costs, offering practical advice for midlife working women who seek career advancement.