There is a summer that knows no sunset, a season of blood and iron that organizations celebrate without cease. Then, inevitable as the flow of an underground river, comes autumn. It is a shift in the light, a readjustment of the inner terrain. For half of humankind, this passage has a precise name, menopause, and an unexplored geography: the office, the factory, the boardroom. Here, in this space that professes to be rational and efficient, the phenomenon becomes the unspoken, a ghost that hovers between blazing radiators and neon lights. Women, at the peak of their power, when they could govern empires with the wisdom accumulated over decades, find themselves battling an internal climate in revolt. Hot flashes like sudden tides rising from the depths, clouding eyes and mind; an insomnia that digs deep furrows into the capacity for judgement; a subtle anxiety, no longer tied to deadlines or projects, but to the mute perception of a body negotiating a new constitution.

Corporations, temples of profit and innovation, faced with this universal transition, pull down the shutters. It is the last taboo, more resistant than the tempered glass separating executive offices. There is talk of wellness, of mindfulness, of diversity, but the word itself – menopause – is swallowed, as if naming it could contaminate the aseptic sterility of work. And so, a silent army of professional women, between forty-five and fifty-five, begins to retreat. Not with a dramatic farewell, but with a slow extinguishing. Resignations tendered with a vague excuse. A reduction in hours that means a voluntary retreat from the arena. The abandonment of leadership positions won at great cost. It is a drainage of intelligence, a brain drain that makes no noise, but leaves a desert of skills and institutional memory. The economy, the real one, made of flesh and sweat and neurons, bleeds this hemorrhage without noticing.

It is not just a matter of lost productivity, of graphs that don’t add up. It is a matter of soul, of trampled dignity. The work environment, built on a perpetual male model, becomes a machine of silent torture. The air is dry or suffocating, breaks are a luxury, the request for a simple fan or a flexible schedule to attend a medical appointment is read as a weakness, a failure. Physical stress multiplies by emotional stress, creating a vicious cycle that undermines long-term health. Society looks the other way, because the mature woman must be strong, must be the rock, she cannot show the cracks of an organism in transformation. It is the latest, most insidious form of gender discrimination: you are not denied the door, but you are left, exhausted, to open it and walk away.

Some nations, like a distant lighthouse in the fog, are beginning to stir. Across the Channel, it is discussed in Parliament. But globally, the silence is deafening. Public and corporate policies sleep a deep sleep. Creating “menopause-friendly” environments is not an act of charity, not a benefit to be added to a list. It is an act of intelligent economic survival and elementary justice. It means recognizing biology not as a handicap, but as a phase of the journey. It means retaining those deep roots that give stability to the entire forest. Equality is not measured at the entrance, but at the finish line. And a finish line that forces half the runners to drop out for lack of water and shade is not a race, it is a planned injustice. The autumn of women should not be a season of abandonment, but of harvest. Of that heavy, golden harvest that only the oldest and wisest trees know how to give.