Speaking at the Diversity and Inclusivity Finance Forum (DIFF), Sonya Matharu, founder of The Mortgage Atelier, said that with women’s health issues, like periods, fertility, miscarriage and menopause, there are “a lot of people that are struggling in silence”.
“It’s about raising awareness and being willing to lean in and… learn and not recoil when someone mentions their period, because I think if you can’t have a conversation about that, then you can’t go further and learn and be open to learn about other different situations,” she said.
Martese Carton, director of mortgage distribution at Leeds Building Society, said the “more people talk about it, the more it becomes… less stigmatised and possibly embarrassing for people”.
“I don’t think, necessarily, that people are recoiling on purpose. I genuinely feel that they’re coming from a place of misunderstanding or ignorance or just pure embarrassment,” she said.
Jason Berry, group sales director at Crystal Specialist Finance, said “active listening without necessarily being expected to immediately fix the situation” was “absolutely crucial”.
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“It’s easy being there when there’s physical signs. It’s easy being there in the moments [that] are noticeable. But actually, if you genuinely care, and you ask and you genuinely care about the people around you, it’s not too difficult to actually understand whether days are going quite as well as someone would hope.
“I think the allyship is there irrespective of whether it’s visible or invisible,” he said.
Women’s health can take mental, physical and emotional toll
Nina Brown, protection adviser at Pam Brown Mortgages, said two years ago, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).
She said the diagnosis was challenging as it can have multiple symptoms that can cause a lot of problems, and it has caused a “lot of issues” both “mentally and physically and emotionally, and in terms of affecting my work”.
Brown said she was lucky as she worked with her mum, but noted it was an “extremely difficult condition to manage if it’s not managed properly”.
Symptoms such as weight gain, hair loss or thinning, hair growth on the face and hot flushes can have a huge impact on confidence, Brown said, but noted that it was often unseen.
Brown went on to say that earlier this year she had got pregnant, which was a surprise as PCOS is a leading factor in infertility, but unfortunately suffered an ectopic pregnancy, so she lost the baby.
She said when she had shared her story on LinkedIn earlier this year, she had had hundreds of women messaging her saying either they or someone they knew had gone through something similar, which brought her hope.
“I didn’t realise that I knew people that had gone through the same experience because they hadn’t shared their story,” she said.
Matharu, who has endometriosis, said it can be “incredibly isolating in the moment when you’re going through something”.
“You don’t know what you need to help you in that moment, because you’re going through the motions, you’re in survival mode, and [it’s] incredibly hard.
“There’s a lot of suffering in silence, a lot of just getting on with it, having something incredibly traumatic happen to you, and the mental impact that has, on top of obviously the physical impact it can have, and the aftermath of it, and we’re just getting on with it, showing up, doing our job, going to the events, and acting like nothing happened, and all of a sudden it kind of comes out in weird and wonderful ways,” she said.
