What the UK's New Menopause Legislation Means for Your Health and Fitness

For the first time in UK legal history, menopause is named directly in employment legislation. The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, and from 6 April 2026, large employers are expected to start publishing equality action plans that include specific provisions for menopause support.

This matters. Not just for workplace policy, but for the roughly 13 million women in the UK who are currently perimenopausal or menopausal ^[1]. That's approximately one in three of the entire female population.

But legislation alone won't solve the problem. While waiting for employers to catch up, taking control of your own health matters more. And the evidence on that front is clear.

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What's actually changing

The Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces equality action plans for employers with 250 or more employees. These plans must address at least two areas: the gender pay gap and menopause support ^[2].

The timeline works like this:

• 6 April 2026: The voluntary phase begins. Large employers are encouraged to publish their plans, and government guidance on how to create them goes live.
• 2027: The mandatory phase kicks in. Employers with 250+ staff will be required to publish plans.

In practice, this means your employer should be thinking about menopause support right now, not waiting until the legal deadline arrives.

The government has also appointed broadcaster and campaigner Mariella Frostrup as the UK's first Menopause Employment Ambassador, a role she's held since October 2024. In April 2025, she launched a Menopause Advisory Group bringing together representatives from the NHS, TUC, CIPD, British Menopause Society, and organisations including Black Women in Menopause ^[3].

As Frostrup put it: "The loss of one in ten women from the workplace, often at the height of their professional careers, is damaging our economy."

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Why this legislation was needed

The numbers behind this law are stark. Research from the Fawcett Society - the UK's largest study of its kind, surveying over 4,000 women aged 45-55 - paints a picture that most workplaces still aren't equipped to deal with ^[4]:

• 1 in 10 women who experienced menopause symptoms at work have left a job because of them
• 61% lost motivation at work
• 52% lost confidence
• 14% reduced their hours, and another 14% moved to part-time work
• 8% chose not to apply for promotion

The CIPD's 2023 workplace survey found that 67% of working women aged 40-60 with menopausal symptoms said those symptoms had a mostly negative effect on their work. Yet only 24% of organisations had any menopause support in place ^[5].

Put another way: the majority of women in the workforce are affected, and the vast majority of employers have done nothing about it.

An estimated 14 million working days are lost to menopause-related absences each year, at a cost of roughly £1.8 billion to the UK economy ^[6].

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What your employer should be doing

The government has published detailed guidance on what good menopause support actually looks like ^[7]. The key areas include:

Flexible working arrangements. Adjustable start and finish times, the option to work from home when symptoms flare up, and understanding when energy levels are unpredictable.

Environmental adjustments. Temperature control, better ventilation, access to fans, desk positioning near windows. Small changes that make a real difference when you're dealing with hot flushes in a meeting room.

Rest provisions. Access to quiet, private spaces for breaks when symptoms become overwhelming.

Uniform and dress code flexibility. Adapting dress codes to accommodate temperature regulation and comfort.

Manager training. Line managers who know how to have supportive, sensitive conversations about menopause and who understand how to use reasonable adjustment processes.

Open conversation culture. Workplaces where menopause isn't treated as embarrassing or taboo. The Fawcett Society found that 8 in 10 women said their employer hadn't shared information, trained staff, or put any menopause absence policy in place.

Acas has published detailed guidance for employers at every stage of this process ^[8], and the EHRC has clarified how existing equality law already applies to menopause in the workplace ^[9].

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Does the legislation go far enough?

It depends on who you ask. The Employment Rights Act is a genuine step forward. It's the first time menopause has been written into UK employment law, and the equality action plan framework gives it structural teeth.

But there are notable gaps.

Menopause is still not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. The Women and Equalities Committee recommended consulting on this in their 2022 inquiry. The government declined, arguing that existing protections under sex, age, and disability already cover menopause-related discrimination ^[10].

Menopause leave was not included. The Act extended paternity, carer's, and bereavement leave, but menopause leave was notably absent. A 2026 survey of HR professionals by VinciWorks found that 61% support making menopause leave a legal right, and 74% believe the Act needs stronger legal protections ^[11].

Enforcement remains unclear. The exact reporting requirements, metrics, and penalties for the mandatory phase (2027) haven't been defined yet. Without clear enforcement, there's a risk that action plans become a box-ticking exercise rather than a genuine commitment to change.

The Fawcett Society has warned that "real progress would only come when employers are required to take decisive action rather than simply publish documents."

Still, a legal framework is better than none. And workplace support is only half the equation.

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What YOU can do: taking control of your own health

Legislation helps. Workplace adjustments help. But no employer can mandate the thing that makes the biggest difference: staying physically active.

The NHS recommends exercise as a frontline tool for managing menopause symptoms, alongside HRT and other medical treatments ^[12]. NICE clinical guidelines position physical activity as a first-line recommendation for vasomotor symptoms, mood changes, and sleep disturbance ^[13].

Here's what regular movement does during perimenopause:

• Reduces the severity of hot flushes. A Cochrane review of the evidence found that regular physical activity is associated with reduced frequency and severity of vasomotor symptoms ^[14].
• Improves sleep. Multiple studies have demonstrated that moderate aerobic exercise improves sleep quality in midlife women, including reduced insomnia severity.
• Lifts mood and reduces anxiety. A meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that exercise had a moderate-to-large effect on depressive symptoms in midlife women, comparable to some medications.
• Preserves bone density. As oestrogen declines, bone loss accelerates. Women can lose up to 20% of bone density in the 5-7 years after menopause. Weight-bearing and resistance exercise directly counters this.
• Maintains muscle mass. Without intervention, women lose roughly 0.5-1% of muscle mass per year from perimenopause onward. Strength training is the most effective non-pharmacological tool to slow or reverse it.

This isn't about training for a marathon or grinding through painful gym sessions. A walk counts. Some gentle strength work counts. Consistency matters far more than intensity.

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The motivation problem nobody talks about

Research from Newson Health (Dr Louise Newson's clinic, one of the UK's leading menopause specialists) found that 77% of perimenopausal women recognise that exercise would help their symptoms. But 51% cite lack of motivation as their primary barrier.

That gap isn't a personal failing. It has a biological explanation.

Oestrogen is a key modulator of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that drives motivation and reward-seeking behaviour. As oestrogen declines during perimenopause, dopamine signalling becomes less efficient. The result: exercise feels less rewarding, even when you rationally know it's good for you.

So the time in your life when exercise matters most is exactly when your brain makes it hardest to do. Understanding that this is biology, not laziness, is the first step towards working with it rather than fighting against it.

What helps:

• Lower the bar. A 10-minute walk is better than a skipped gym session. On difficult days, the goal is simply to move.
• Make it social. Walking with a friend, joining a group, or sharing goals with someone else provides external motivation when the internal drive is unreliable.
• Track effort, not performance. A hard 20 minutes on a bad day is more impressive than an easy hour on a good one. Tools that adapt to your fluctuating energy are more sustainable than rigid targets that make you feel like you've failed.
• Add accountability. The research is consistent: sharing a fitness goal with someone else makes you significantly more likely to follow through.

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Moving forward

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is a meaningful moment. The law now says your experience of menopause matters in a professional context, and that your employer has a responsibility to support you through it.

But rights and support are only part of the picture. What you do for yourself matters too: staying active, even in small ways, even on the hard days, even when your brain is telling you not to bother.

If the biggest barrier you face isn't information but motivation, you're in good company. Motion was built around that problem: effort-based goals that adapt to how you actually feel, social accountability that keeps you going when the drive isn't there.

Your employer might be catching up. In the meantime, you don't have to wait.