Kathleen Riach

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Summary

Kathleen Riach is a professor of management and organization studies at the University of Glasgow with a visiting position at Monash University, Australia. She also holds editorial board and associate editor positions for top journals in her field. A leading researcher on growing older in work, Riach has published in leading international journals on topics including age discrimination, the ideologies of aging, youth transitions, aging bodies, and menopause. Through her work, she makes visible the indexes of age and gender that organize our lives and considers how we might challenge and transform those indexes. Riach’s research also contributes to developments in awareness and education surrounding the impact of menopause on working lives.

Description of Research Impact

Riach’s work has had a significant impact on both business and wider society:

• Menopause Information Pack for Organizations (MIPO)

The discussion of menopause has traditionally occurred in the domain of medicine, although its relevance as a workplace issue has been marked by increased media attention and the rise of citations in tribunal cases. The MIPO, a global-reaching online resource, was launched in 2019 and is updated regularly to include links to new work and resources. Its contents have been downloaded over 12,000 times across 52 countries, and the resources, which Riach not only updates but also develops, have been directly adopted by several organizations in shaping menopause internal practices. The MIPO has informed organizationwide policies for NHS 24 (healthcare), the University of Canberra (education), DLA Piper (law), and Carr Gomm (social care).

• Policy

Riach led a consortium providing written evidence on menopause to the U.K. government’s All-Party Parliamentary Committee in 2022. In the evidence, Riach advised the Committee on issues raised by potential recommendations noting caution surrounding the legislative proposals to include menopause as a protective characteristic. As a result, she was invited to sit on the Scottish government’s Women’s Health Plan’s Working Party for Menopause and Menstrual Health (2022 to 2024). Riach undertook a survey of healthcare workers that will act as key evidence for shaping policy across the Scottish healthcare system and the public sector.

• Education and Awareness around Menopause at Work

Riach was appointed as an expert advisor in the creation of a standard around menstruation and menopause by the British Standards Institution. In this appointment, Riach drew on her research to shape policy, ensuring the fair representation of multiple experiences of menopause across sexuality and ethnicity. She has since been invited to lead in developing an international standard by ISO.

Riach’s research-based expertise continues to inform medical practitioners on the impact of conditions related to menopause in work contexts. She has been consulted on a series of curriculum statements adopted by the European Menopause and Andropause Society, considered by medical and healthcare practitioners to be the leading professional body on the subject.

Recently, Riach’s expertise has led to a new resource for the U.S. market, which is being developed in collaboration with the global marketing company TBWA Worldwide. Along with drawing on MIPO resources for content, Riach’s published work has been used as evidence to inform content from an intersectional perspective that speaks to the U.S. working population.

Examples of Research Impact

Further examples of Riach’s research impact include the following:

• Serving as a chief investigator working across multiple professional bodies in healthcare as part of an Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership initiative. Central to this role has been an innovative partnership approach that involves working with member organizations including The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and state government bodies such as the Department of Health.

• Engaging with healthcare professionals to encourage them to consider labor-market experiences and workplace cultures when interacting with patients going through menopausal transition. This work involved developing the European Menopause and Andropause Society’s Menopause and Work Charter.

• Educating healthcare physicians on how supportive or negative experiences in the workplace can impact menopausal transition. This included speaking at the OBNET professional development day in Atlanta, and the NHS Wales Second All Wales Menopause Conference.

• Continuing to develop evidence-based resources for workplace managers through the MIPO open-access, online portal. As a result of this effort, Riach’s work directly is directly informing the menopause and menstrual leave policies for organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors internationally.

Select Publication

• Mariam Mousa et al., “Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership: A Systematic Review and Meta-Synthesis of Multi-sector Evidence on Organizational Interventions,” eClinical Medicine 39, no. 101084 (August 11, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101084.

Supporting Links

• Menopause Information Pack for Organizations, Menopause at Work
• Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership—Our Partners, Monash University
• EMAS Menopause and Work Charter, European Menopause and Andropause Society