By Amy McKeown, Workplace Health Strategy Consultant
When Britain’s suffragettes campaigned for the vote in the early 1900s, women in allied labour movements were also pressing for safer, fairer workplaces; shorter hours in the mills and protections against the industrial hazards that damaged so many workers’ health.
By 1935, when the Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) was founded (then known as the Association of Industrial Medical Officers), women finally had the ballot but little equality at work. Factories and offices were still designed around male bodies and male careers. Occupational medicine, while pioneering, focused mainly on the hazards of heavy industry, and issues like menstruation, pregnancy and menopause were scarcely acknowledged.
As we celebrate SOM’s 90th anniversary, political representation has taken a historic step. Following the most recent reshuffle, women now hold three of the UK’s great offices of state for the first time: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Yet the promise of equality stops at many workplace doors.
The economic toll is clear. Government research estimates that menopause-related employment loss costs the UK about £1.5 billion each year, with more than 14 million workdays lost to symptoms. Pregnancy discrimination remains widespread. Support for menstrual health is inconsistent. Women are still more likely to work in low-paid or insecure jobs, to shoulder unpaid care, and to face barriers to promotion. Legal rights have expanded, but real equality in daily working conditions has not followed.
That is why SOM created its Women’s Health at Work Network, a professional forum linking occupational health specialists, HR leaders, and researchers to close these gaps. Working with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the network turns evidence into practice, offering guidance on menopause policies, manager training, and toolkits to help organisations support women through every stage of working life.
Momentum is building globally. A draft ISO standard on menopause and menstruation at work is under consultation, providing the first international blueprint for employer action: flexible scheduling, temperature control, confidential clinical advice, and early occupational health referral. SOM’s Women’s Health at Work Network is feeding its expertise into that process to ensure the standard reflects real needs and can be rapidly adopted across the UK.
But a checklist will not close the gap. New research from the CIPD shows UK employees now average 9.4 sick days a year, up from 5.8 before the pandemic, and only 31 per cent of employers use occupational health proactively. Too many organisations still treat women’s health as a private matter rather than a strategic priority.
This month’s Occupational Health Awareness Week (22–28 September) and SOM’s 90th anniversary is an invitation to act. Employers should integrate women’s health into every occupational health plan.
The suffragettes fought for political rights; the next revolution is in the workplace itself. Ninety years after SOM’s founding, our mission is unchanged: protect health, prevent harm, and prove that good work is good medicine. Real equality will come only when every employer, from factory floor to fintech start-up, designs work around the whole workforce, not just half of it.
