Alicia Grandey, Pennsylvania State University

Middle age is the golden age for employees, with assumptions of greater expertise and stability resulting in being “leadership material”. Middle age also brings new experiences for those with female reproductive organs – namely, menopause – about which organizational scholarship is largely silent. Prior research shows that women are embarrassed to share their menopausal status at work, but vasomotor symptoms (“hot flashes”) -- sweating and flushing – are a common and observable experience that may “out” her menopausal identity. I will discuss how menopause is a “taboo” at work, drawing on the stigma and disclosure literature to propose that menopausal stigma constrains leadership opportunities for women and what can be done about it. Describing findings from a series of experimental vignette methodology studies, I will answer the following questions: 1) What is menopause and why is it relevant to study in organizational contexts? 2) Does menopausal status evoke less favorable stereotypes than middle-age in ways that constrain leadership outcomes for women? 3) Does concealing or disclosing menopausal status from work colleagues improve judgments of leadership potential? In short, I aim to share why it is both prevalent and relevant to study menopause in organizational science, and what we can do to reduce the potential for biased decisions about leader potential.