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To Support Women or Not: The Employer’s Conundrum
TL; DR: The menopause legislation movement has accelerated faster than most organizations realize. As of early 2026, 19 states have introduced bills and 8 are now law. Rhode Island was first to mandate workplace accommodations. More states are following. The business case is clear: the U.S. economy loses $26.6 billion annually to menopause-related productivity and healthcare costs. That number does not include reduced hours, early retirement, or the leadership pipeline drain happening before women ever walk out the door.
Just as this momentum is building, the EEOC is suing Coca-Cola for hosting a women-only networking event, investigating Nike for DEI-related practices, and operating under an executive order targeting gender-specific employer programs. The organization trying to do the right thing now faces liability on both sides. This article breaks down the legal collision, names the obstacle honestly, and makes the case for why organizational courage, not compliance, is the only durable path forward.
On April 7th, 2026, the New York Times published a piece by Joanne Lipman, a journalist who has spent 15 years covering women in the workplace. The headline: “I’ve Covered Women in the Workplace for 15 Years. Something Alarming Is Happening”. I read it and felt a familiar thud inside my chest, a recognition of the effort to stall women from being accorded their full humanity.
The United States, for the first time in 70 years, recently refused to sign off on the UN Commission on the Status of Women’s annual principles to reaffirm “commitments to gender equality.”
What is happening inside U.S. organizations today is a microcosm of that larger reversal, and most employers are caught in the middle of it.
The Menopause Momentum
In February 2025, I spoke at TEDx San Diego on breaking the silence on perimenopause.
Just over a year later, 19 states have introduced menopause legislation. Eight bills are now law. Rhode Island became the first state to explicitly prohibit workplace discrimination based on menopause and require reasonable accommodations for employees experiencing symptoms. Philadelphia passed a city ordinance effective January 2027. Virginia, California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois all have bills actively advancing. Red and blue legislatures alike are moving on this.
The practical implication is significant. We are moving, faster than most organizations realize, from a world where no one asks a departing woman whether her menopause transition had anything to do with her decision to leave, to a world where you can be sued because you failed to accommodate for it. That is a dizzying shift in a very short time.
And yet, at the very moment this momentum is building, a counterforce is emerging inside U.S. workplaces that is making it harder, not easier, for employers to act.
“Illegal DEI”
On February 17, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast for sex discrimination. The lawsuit alleges that by hosting a two-day networking event for female employees only, male employees were excluded. It is important to note that the event had hotel, meals, and paid time off from regular duties, which the male employees could not avail of because they were not part of the event. Case No. 1:26-cv-00115, U.S. District Court, District of New Hampshire.
This lawsuit is one of several actions the EEOC has taken under Executive Order 14173, signed in January 2025, targeting what the current administration calls “illegal DEI.” The EEOC is also investigating Nike for alleged race discrimination against white employees. The agency’s acting general counsel has been clear that gender-specific employer programs are now in the crosshairs.
Taken alongside the menopause legislation, I wonder what it means.
States are beginning to legally require employers to accommodate women experiencing menopause. The federal government is simultaneously signaling that gender-specific employer programs violate Title VII. An organization trying to do the right thing, whether by running a women’s mentorship event, hosting a menopause awareness lunch, or creating a women’s ERG, now faces liability on both sides.
That feels like a trap. Act, and you risk violating Title VII. Do nothing, and you risk attrition, disengagement, and future legal exposure.
Law Vs Reality
The EEOC is advancing a legal argument that workplace benefits must be distributed with neutrality, meaning no employee can be excluded based on sex. Their point is once you allow “well-intentioned” exclusion, the boundary of discrimination becomes subjective and unenforceable.
But reality is not neutral.
Women and men do not enter the workplace with identical biology, social conditioning, or career trajectories. Menopause, caregiving burdens, and accumulated structural barriers create materially different needs.
The emerging compromise is a model of inclusion at the level of access, even if the content is targeted. Programs can address women-specific challenges, but participation cannot be restricted by sex.
The unresolved question is cultural, not legal. If these spaces are no longer identity-exclusive, will they still function as true “safe spaces,” or will the very conditions that made them effective, including psychological safety, shared lived experience, and unfiltered dialogue, be diluted in the name of compliance?
That is a question organizations will need to answer for themselves, but it is a far better problem to have than the alternative of doing nothing.
The Cost of Menopause
The U.S. economy loses $26.6 billion annually to lost productivity and healthcare costs resulting from employees managing menopause symptoms, according to Mayo Clinic research. That is an incomplete and conservative number as it does not include the collateral paid by women due to unaddressed menopause. This includes reduced hours, early retirement, deferred promotions, diminished output in the years before she leaves, or the compounding cost of losing your most experienced people.
According to a global survey of more than 8,000 women conducted by the Korn Ferry Institute in partnership with Vira Health, the pattern escalates with seniority: 31% of first-level supervisors, 36% of mid-level managers, and 43% of senior executives have quit or considered quitting their jobs due to menopause symptoms. These are women who took decades to develop, carry invaluable institutional knowledge, and are at or near the peak of their impact.
This is a leadership crisis that organizations have not yet realized.
The Case for Menopause Support At Work
Every CHRO I speak with knows what needs to happen. They have the data and have made the case internally. They have also watched it get deprioritized, deferred, or dropped in favor of other initiatives.
Most organizations do not have leadership teams willing to treat this as a business prerogative.
I spent years at Goldman Sachs. I know there is a difference between leaders who make the hard call because it is right and leaders who wait until they have no other choice. Leaders who act early are often the ones who face challenges with their organizations and teams intact.
So, the question is this. If the data is clear, the legal exposure is clear, and the cost of inaction is clear, what is the obstacle? It is lack of organizational will reinforced by the current political environment.
Courage Over Conundrum
In my last newsletter, I talked about the momentum of legislation around menopause. But I was clear that forcing change with legislation does not serve us. We want to act because we see that there is a need. The culture-first solution that is inclusive and built on true psychological safety rather than legal compliance is the right one. It is also the legally safer one in the current environment. A menopause awareness program open to all genders, framed around business performance and retention, is far harder to challenge under the Coca-Cola precedent than a women-only event. We want men to attend menopause literacy events!
Culture change is not easy. In today’s environment, this is even more challenging. The federal government has signaled that gender equity commitments are negotiable. The EEOC is actively targeting programs designed to support underrepresented groups. The political environment is handing every reluctant leader a convenient excuse to look away.
Culture-first requires organizational courage. Organizational courage requires leaders with budget, authority, and the ability to set the agenda to choose to implement culture change. It requires them to act before a lawsuit forces their hand. It requires them to acknowledge that losing their most experienced women at the peak of their careers is not acceptable.
Preparing to Lead
The organizations that will come out of this moment well are the ones that start the conversation now, openly, across genders, across levels of seniority. They will build cultures and policies that can withstand shifts in leadership, regulation, and enforcement priorities.
A workplace that can speak honestly about what is happening in women’s bodies and brains at midlife is building something far more durable than compliance. It is building institutional clarity, an ability to face biological reality without distortion and to design systems around it. That capacity doesn’t just solve for menopause; it elevates how the organization handles every complex, human challenge it will face.
As I said in my last newsletter, when you combine Gen X women with menopause and AI, you get legislation. That reckoning is here. Let me reiterate what Joanne Lipman said, when women mobilize, systems change, often toward greater equity and stability. The organizations that understand this won’t fear the conversation; they will recognize it as a source of strength.
The question is whether your organization leads the conversation or gets dragged into it.
Dr. Manna Semby ND MSCP IFMCP is the founder and CEO of the Center for Cognitive Resilience and the clinician behind Aruna Personalized Medicine. She is a menopause specialist, former Goldman Sachs VP, and TEDx + keynote speaker. She writes The Biology of Leadership for those who want to understand what midlife biology costs their organizations, and what they can do about it.
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