The silence around menopause in India needs to break

ON May 28, as the world marks the International Day of Action for Women's Health, we need to talk about something Indian public health almost never addresses. Menopause.

- Poonam Muttreja and Priya Nanda

Despite being a virtually universal experience for women, menopause remains invisible in policy, planning, and even workplace or family discussions. Women can experience extreme symptoms over several long years of perimenopause and menopause, including hot flashes, disrupted sleep, depression, joint pain, and cognitive changes that are often physically debilitating, mentally draining, and economically disruptive. A large majority of Indian women navigate menopause in silence, without clinical guidance or institutional support, and often without even knowing what they are going through.

The scale of this neglect is hard to overstate. This year alone, approximately 140 million women in India will experience menopause. As life expectancy rises to 73.6 years, women will spend nearly three decades of their lives in a post-menopausal stage. Managing menopause health is crucial to leveraging what demographers call the "silver dividend", the economic and social opportunities that arise from a growing older population.