TV presenter Gráinne Seoige says Irish society needs to stop feeling ‘shame’ over menopause

“It’s a natural and inevitable transition. You can’t avoid it, you can’t make it go away by not acknowledging it. It is going to happen to every single one of us,” she said.

“This country has a unique set of circumstances.

“We have so much shame around women’s health and our fertility and our sexuality. We have a hangover from that and also, we have the western obsession with youth culture.

“So I think the two of those together provide Ireland with a very specific set of circumstances that has made it very, very difficult for women to either admit that they are there (menopausal) or think they might be there and therefore look for information.”

Seoige (48), who has worked for RTÉ and Sky News during her lengthy TV career, also said at TG4’s autumn schedule launch that she feels the media industry does not value women “with a lot of craft and experience”.

“It’s about being as young as you can for as long as you can. So it’s no wonder, in a way, that women don’t actually want to think about the fact that menopause is creeping up. But actually, the more prepared you are, the better the transition will be,” she said.

“And the other point I’d like to make is, every single one of us went through puberty and every single one of us has compassion for teenagers walking around, slamming doors, not tidying their rooms, sleeping in too late.

“They’re doing that because their body needs that to go through the changes they’re going through.

“Every woman goes through a different change as well and we need to be more compassionate towards ourselves and have more compassion from our family and our workplace as well.”

She said that if the last couple of years of the pandemic has taught us anything as a society, it’s that it is a privilege to grow old and reach different stages of life. “I think the wisdom of women at that age should be celebrated. I think it’s a time, unfortunately, that a lot of women tend to leave the workplace because they feel less valued and the opposite should be true,” she said.

“They are a long time working at their craft, they are now experts at what they do and what they bring to the table should be valued an awful lot more.”

In her documentary Meanapás: Meon Nua, she will be seen meeting various women who felt “invisible” after reaching that stage of life. The Galway native, who moved home two years ago from South Africa with husband Leon Jordaan, also explores the push for a campaign for a national menopause policy.

Her programme was one of three female-led documentaries that were unveiled at TG4’s autumn season launch at Dublin’s Guinness Storehouse yesterday.