Abstract
This paper provides a systematic review of the phenomenon of menopause at the workplace from a sustainable career perspective, by highlighting its major themes along with the evolution and tendencies observed in this field. A conceptual science mapping analysis based on co-word bibliographic networks was developed, using the SciMAT tool. From 1992 to 2020, 185 documents were retrieved from the Web of Science. In the first analyzed time span (1992–2002), postmenopausal women, health, and risk factors appeared to be the motor themes (well-developed and important for the structure of the discipline under focus), and disorder was an emerging or disappearing theme in the phenomenon under research. In the second studied period (2003–2013), risk and health were motor themes, menopausal symptoms was a basic or transversal theme (important for the discipline but not well-developed), coronary heart disease was a specialized theme (well-developed but less important for the structure of the research field), and postmenopausal women was an emerging or disappearing theme (both weakly developed and marginal to the field). In the third studied period (2014–2020), menopause, breast cancer, and menopausal symptoms were motor themes, Anxiety was a specialized theme and risk and body mass index were emerging or disappearing themes. Sustainability of women’s careers in the second half of life is of increasing importance given the increasing equal representation of men and women in working organizations, and the impact of the changing nature of work in the 21st century on older workers.
Highlights
This paper provides a systematic review of the phenomenon of menopause at the workplace from a sustainable career perspective, by highlighting its major themes along with the evolution and tendencies observed in this field
Departing from a sustainable career perspective [10,11], we argue that experiences related to menopause might have consequences for women’s careers because bodily changes and hormonal fluctuations [15,16] might intersect with their perceived health, happiness and productivity which are the core indicators of sustainable careers [10,11,17], as well as with the experiences important key figures in their environment might have
Given the hormonal changes and the stereotyping that occurs during menopause, we argue that it is likely that the career sustainability of women is affected during the menopause
Summary
The concept of menopause has been tackled extensively in the scientific literature, and it has resulted in a large number of publications in medical sciences publications (see for example [1]). Departing from a sustainable career perspective [10,11], we argue that experiences related to menopause might have consequences for women’s careers because bodily changes and hormonal fluctuations [15,16] might intersect with their perceived health (e.g., work ability, burn-out), happiness (e.g., job satisfaction, motivation to continue working) and productivity (e.g., job performance, employability) which are the core indicators of sustainable careers [10,11,17], as well as with the experiences important key figures (e.g., one’s supervisor, colleagues, family and friends) in their environment might have The latter might be translated into negative stereotypes about menopausal women [18,19]. The subsequent section will go into the findings of our bibliometric review, followed by a discussion section wherein we reflect on our outcomes and propose recommendations for future scientific work in this field
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