The career cost nobody budgets for, and the companies finally pricing it in
Around one woman in three who holds a management or executive post has at some point seriously weighed quitting because of menopausal symptoms. The figure is 34%, drawn from a 2025 survey by WebMD Health Services, and few companies in Southeast Wisconsin or anywhere else track it on their reporting dashboards.
Here is why this should earn a moment of your focus.
For most women, menopause arrives between roughly 45 and 55, which overlaps with the years they are most likely to be promoted into senior leadership. Just when a company gets the most value from its female executives, many of them may be fighting a hot flash in the middle of a board presentation or pushing through an 8 a.m. meeting after only three hours of sleep. meeting at a downtown Milwaukee office, or losing a word mid-sentence.
According to that same survey, 45% of women in leadership roles hide what they are experiencing from colleagues. Deloitte's 2025 Women @ Work report shows that 36% of women who have symptoms endure serious discomfort while carrying on with their workday. Exploding Topics, a trend-tracking service, reports that searches for "perimenopause" have risen by about 740%. Women are talking about it. Most workplace policies, by contrast, have not kept pace with that interest.
Source of the numbers
In 2025, WebMD Health Services surveyed employed women about the menopause support they receive and how their symptoms interfere with work. The Deloitte study was built on responses from 7,500 women living in 15 different countries. Neither project counts everyone, and both rely on women reporting their own experiences. Still, the findings line up, and they point in one direction: women at the top are leaving, or seriously considering it, for a reason many were taught never to mention.
How a typical weekday actually unfolds
Imagine a chief operating officer, age 51, getting ready for the quarterly review. She slept from 1 to 4 a.m. By now she has already nudged the thermostat down two times, and she expects she will have to do it again. In the middle of the meeting she loses the word "amortization" for a full four seconds while the CFO looks on. No one comments. Long after the meeting ends she keeps asking herself whether anyone caught it, and across the quarter she keeps doubting whether she still has what the job requires.
Her mind remains quick. Statistically, she is also one of the women in that third who have thought seriously about leaving.
What this signals for your own situation
If you are dealing with symptoms, staying completely silent tends to be the most expensive option. Sharing more personal detail than a colleague needs to know is the second pitfall. The better route lies in the middle: specific, limited, and without apology.
What to request
Ask whether your schedule can bend for those early-morning gatherings. A simple line could be, "I'm dealing with a health issue and would like to skip 8 a.m. meetings." starts for the next few months." You do not have to name a diagnosis, and a manager who insists on one has already revealed something useful about the workplace.
You can also ask for temperature control in your space, a confidential contact in HR, and a review of benefits that addresses menopause the way it already addresses maternity. If you set policy yourself, make these changes before anyone asks. Replacing a senior leader costs far more than a fan and a paragraph in the employee handbook, whether you are at a large Milwaukee employer or a growing firm in Waukesha County.
Seek out women a few years ahead of you. They know which physicians in the area are worth seeing, which symptom to address first, and how to approach a particular boss. Peer networks like these, including the ones listed through the Milwaukee Women Leaders Association and local groups such as Milwaukee Women Inc. and TEMPO Milwaukee, are a large part of why they exist.
What would it take for you to be able to name this openly at work?