Digital Spaces and Menopause Support: Insights from Gabriela Ramirez Rey

Gabriela Ramírez Rey is an Argentinian researcher and communications strategist based in Sweden and has explored perimenopause and menopause through the lens of digital communities, care and resistance. With over 15 years of experience in journalism, digital strategy and feminist advocacy across Latin America and Europe, Gabriela joined me in a recorded conversation where we talk about the  intersection of gender, technology and health and spend some time unpacking…

  • Medical blind spots and structural neglect of women's health issues 

  • How that neglect shows up both in our individual doctor's appointments and in bigger spaces when we think about technology, funding, resources and in our families and workplaces. 

  • Generational silence

  • MONEY

  • Tech and funding entrepreneurs who are looking at women's health in different ways

  • What we can do to RESIST and create change

You can find Gabriela’s thesis via her site here https://www.gabrielaramirezrey.com/ and below are some of the resources we discussed:

Prefer to listen to the podcast? Get it here: Digital resistance, community and menopause, a conversation with Gabriela Ramirez Rey

Gabriela Ramírez Rey is an Argentinian researcher and communications strategist based and joined us from the perspective of research, technology, medical frameworks, as well as being in a woman's body. She is a journalist, strategist and consultant who works mostly in the technology and research space and has written a thesis, which I'll link below, around menopause, marginalisation and digital resistance to medical neglect in Sweden.

So some big words here and we unpack what that means in terms of medical blind spots and structural neglect of women's health issues and how that shows up both in our individual doctor's appointments and in bigger spaces when we think about technology, funding, resources, what that means in our families and workplaces. So I think you're gonna get so much good information and a couple of takeaways here around having conversations with previous generations, funding entrepreneurs who are looking at women's health in different ways, educating ourselves, creating communities, resisting. And as Gabriella says, making noise, we need to make noise. So thank you so much for being here. I'm excited for you to have access to this interview and this conversation. It was an absolute delight hosting it. And I'm hoping that you're going to get something from it when you listen. Thank you so much.

Gabriela, I'm so excited to be able to have a conversation with you today. It's Monday morning, my time when we're recording and what a treat to start my Monday with you. Do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about the work you do in the world?

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me first. It is my pleasure and my honour to be today with you here. So I'm Gabriela Ramirez Rey. I'm an Argentinian journalist and scholar. And I live now in Sweden, in Stockholm. And I'm doing various things, but most of that is based on research on the situation of women in different situations or different industries and connecting that to technology as well. So I lead, I research and lead projects to tackle some of the questions that we have nowadays regarding the intersection of gender and technology.

I had a look at the work that you do and I think in one of the things that was describing you, it was talking about unbiasing, right? This thing of technology and where it comes from and who's creating it and who it's being created for. Tell me about how that kind of trickled into or moved into perimenopause or the experience of menopause with women.

So I worked in tech for many years and I saw how things are built. And who builds the things that we use day by day. And something that I started to see on the space is that everything that is related to women's health is not going through the same, in the same way that other topics are spoken out there.

At first I thought it was bias or it was just, not censorship, some kind of fear or taboo around the topics. But then I could see that it was censorship. It was different from other topics. And perimenopause and menopause, to be honest, one of the sectors that is posting the most on the Internet right now because you have a majority of women on that age that don't receive answers to any questions and create this kind of online communities around the topic. And also I think it was around a personal question as well. I'm 35. I'm on this stage where people tell you, you should freeze the eggs or you should have frozen eggs at some points or this idea of I am close enough to menopause and perimenopause.

And I started to also see how the narrative change around periods and around fertility, but not around perimenopause and menopause. So I think that topic captured my ideas about myself at the moment and how we discuss those topics. And also this connection with technology, using technology for good, let's say, or to find each other. So for me it was a really, really interesting topic to research.

So I'm hearing almost two things around technology in a way, if I understand this correctly and you tell me if I'm wrong. One is you're saying women's health software or apps or development aren't receiving the same amount of attention, focus, creation.

And on the other hand, women are confused and turning to the internet or technology or online communities as resources and sources of information. Did I get that right?

Yes, and we have one more aspect is that unfortunately we don't have funding for women's app or women's content in general. So I met many, many wonderful entrepreneurs in this space and they are unfortunately running short on funding because all the funding goes to other things that is not women's health. Some people at some point say, for example, well, women in that age are not on the internet really.

And that's not true. There's always an excuse not to fund these kind of things. But they're really, really interesting projects in the tech space based on women's health. But they don't have money, so they can't continue.

Yeah, so that's really interesting. You're saying there are good ideas, there are people who have initiatives and ideas for businesses or ways of serving, but it's not trickled down from an investment point of view. There's no governmental funding, there's no private funding that's going into that.

No, and it's the same for research, actually. So most of the things that happen around women's health in this age, in perimenopause and menopause, it's like we don't have enough research about that. So we can't tell you anything. And this is an universal experience. That's the other thing. Like everyone who is born with an aneurysm will undergo a menopause or perimenopause at any point in different stages. We don't have an explanation on why we don't have enough research, other than this is kind of an up programmed ignorance, I will say, and that's one of the of the frameworks I use for my theories as well. We have a feminist scholar talking about this kind of ignorance on produced ignorance, right? We don't get the funds out there so we can know more about this.

Produced ignorance. So there's an intentionality around that ignorance of we could spend money on that, but we choose not to. We choose to be ignorant around it. Is that what you mean?

Yes, and also on a point as that we know that we don't know, but we don't care, right? Like we could spend that money on other things at some point. And this is something that is really life changing for many, many women that they don't understand what is happening to them, to their bodies. They think that something is wrong. Then they go to doctors and they get dismissed.

Or maybe they say, this is age, so you should carry, you should cope with that. And this is really, really difficult for many of them. And I think there's also, we should have a shift on the narrative as well, because it's seen as a terrible period where you don't know what to do and you can't expect anything but your life falling apart. And that's something I analyse as well on the thesis.

We should shift the narrative because talking with many women who had their menopause already, they described that as a really happy period where everything is okay and everything is balanced and they have another kind of knowledge, let's say, from the other side. So it's not just you're old now and this is your life, right?

You can have support to get to have that period in a more peaceful way let's say to continue with your life and continue with your your normal life I would say.

You talked about a medical blind spot, I think, in one of the articles that I read. What do you mean by that?

Well, I I based that on what I saw from the interviews that, for example, someone has a symptom that is weird, to be honest, for example, the frozen shoulder symptom, that is that you can't put your shoulders up. Right. And then you go to a doctor and the doctor says, no, you should go to a trauma therapy because maybe you suffer some trauma in the but that's that's a really common symptom.

And then another common symptom was itchiness in the ear. And they're like separate things, right? That maybe you go to one doctor for one thing, to the other doctor for another, and no one at some point says, well, maybe this is an oestrogen thing, right? We should check this, this and that. So it seems like a medical blind spot where at a certain age, no one starts to ask if maybe this is because of that.

And especially in Sweden, where I based my research, doctors receive half a day training on perimenopause and menopause. So at some point it's like, well, OK, we should expect more around that. But they receive only half a day training. So they don't have at some point the signals on, well, this is a weird thing, but you should look into it at least.

And then I think there's also a kind of a narrative blind spot as well, where we don't ask our mothers and our family around their symptoms because our menopause is really connected to them. So another thing I found after working on this thesis is many women saying, I started asking my mom because I'm lucky enough to have her alive. What was it for her? At what age it started, what kind of symptoms. It's really, really connected to the perimenopause and menopause. So if you have this kind of weird symptom that your mom had, you are probably entering that age, right? But then again, we have this kind of mourning of the productive of reproductive value. So there are also many people who say, I prefer not to know if this is happening.

But I always think that knowing and knowledge is empowering, so you should know. Then you can know what to do with that, right? You can think what to do. But for me, it's really, really strange that we have this medical blind spot, to be honest.

Yeah, and I almost understand that blind spot in a couple of different ways as you're speaking. Number one is looking at the symptoms as the whole person, right? You're saying and I see that so much in the work that I do, which is maybe more mindset or how we're feeling as opposed to the physical. And when I start probing or I put together a list of symptoms or indicators that we may see. So if we've got anxiety and we're also not sleeping and we're also having kind of maybe depressive thoughts and a frozen shoulder. Here are some things that might be leading us to, and I'm also in my late thirties, but my periods are regular, right? So then people dismiss all of these things happening as, maybe something's changing within my hormones. And I think it's so interesting to hear you speak about what you've seen in terms of medicine of different practitioners almost being called upon. And so we may have somebody prescribing antidepressants and we may have a physio working on the frozen shoulder and we may have our ear, nose and throat specialists looking in our ears and we're not connecting the dots for ourselves because we haven't put that all in the same place in our heads. Someone that I interviewed called menopause a full body job. It's like a whole process.

And that sounds like almost the antidote to this medical blind spot. And the other kind of thing that I'm hearing is this maybe because there's been some shame or because there is some sorrow or because there is this narrative of, you know, decline or it's the end of the end of your good years, quote unquote. Maybe there's also that reluctance for an older generation to be open about their experience or maybe there was a little bit more secrecy or shame or kind of we don't talk about that in the generation that have gone before and so those stories aren't often passed on as and this is what I noticed and this is what you might see in your body and so such a useful question and takeaway for anyone listening is to have a conversation with mothers, aunts, women in your community around what they experienced in their time.

Yes, absolutely. It changes from body to body, to be honest. It's not absolute same, but then, for example, ages are really important. So ages are really, really aligned where you can expect, you know, like some symptoms to start. And of course, like, you know, like the let's say big symptoms, for example, there are people who gain too much weight in a really small period of time.

Something that I noticed as well is that all the women tend to dismiss their experience kind of, why am going to talk about this? No one is going really to care. And I think that's an important thing as well. If we don't have the spaces with our doctors or with our community in person, online spaces are really, important because you can be there for someone who doesn't understand what is happening.

And maybe think that this is the age of decline and that's it, like I will be declining my whole life. This also starts in the middle age. It's not something that happens at, I don't know, like 80, like we are supposed to live past 80 years now and this is happening at 35, 38, 40 even. So it's half of your age. So it's important to approach this age with courage.

It's okay, your body is changing, that's fine. There are things to help you. There's also a lot of issues around the hormone replacement therapy because at some point it was dismissed for many, many years for a study that it was not really well done, to be honest. So there are instruments to help you. But then you need to find your community at some point, I think. It's really, really important to talk about that with your friends, with your family, if you find a doctor that's perfect with your doctor. But my research shows that that's not the case in most of the cases because we don't have this holistic doctor, let's say, that says, well, this is normal, we can do this with that, right? It's difficult to find it.

Dismissing your own experience is something that I see over and over again in so many ways in the work that I do around burnout prevention, around leadership, around entrepreneurship. Of women pushing themselves through adversity, not giving themselves support, not resourcing and being very close to an edge of exhaustion or pain and continuing on.

And often they're also women that are full of grace for the other. Very eager to help the other, very eager to be the person that steps in or the shoulder to cry on all of those things. And I think this is a really interesting dynamic of I won't ask for help or I don't deserve help myself, but I'm so willing to give help. And so when I think about you saying finding community, that's in a way this place where we can support each other. We can be the mirror that says, want you to feel good, you should feel strong, you deserve all the help that you can get. Like this is not the way that it has to be. And in that, we get to hear from each other and see each other change that. So I found your wording around digital resistance to medical neglect quite an interesting and a strong way of putting it.

Tell us more about how you see digital resistance in menopause and marginalisation.

So what I see is that the digital space is a space where you can participate and you can be safe. That's also a good thing to say. So you can participate anonymously and give your experience or give help or ask for help, ask some questions. I see that that's the space where people empower them before going to a doctor, because that's another thing. Many people reporting saying, well, I should have said this and that, but I felt so violent the discourse of the doctor that I couldn't say anything. They serve also as spaces of empowering. They share a lot of resources, a lot of material, news, also the experience of famous people that started to talk about that.

I, for example, there's a really good video of Drew Barrymore saying, I'm having the hot flashes. And that's something that is really, really a small thing, but it's a big thing to spark a conversation, right? Even with the family saying, this is normal, you can do this at work, for example. It's okay, it's normal. And I see that they feel this sense of community.

So you have a question and it will be addressed. And of course, this is problematic at some point, the communities, the online communities in the sense that some people are giving medical advice and they're not doctors. And I recognise that that is problematic. And also that the digital space is of course not neutral. So we have this idea with the algorithms that there are some things that some discourses that are not privileged enough that we can't find that easily or some words that are censored and most of those words, censored words come from women's health issues. But again, once you find a group of people and you find your language or you find a way of not saying those words, for now it helps.

Then we need to discuss and that's another part of our research that I'm working on right now on censorship or why these words are censored. We can't write them freely on the internet. What does that mean for the language, of course? But once you find your community, it seems that everyone is so relieved because then they can go to the doctor with information, with actual information. Like, for example, tell me about this hormone replace therapy or tell me about these studies that I need to do in order to know if I'm eligible or not. And it's really difficult to find that information for yourself, to be honest, because there's so much contradiction on the internet. And most of that contradiction is like, you shouldn't use anything.

You should go to work and then I don't know like cry in the bathroom or change three times in the bathroom or go sleep deprived or whatever. So I found I find them really really interesting and a form of resisting this medical neglect on you're just old you should have this antidepressant and that's it, right?

So resistance in terms of I won't just submit, I won't just take this advice and be silent and suffer. I will be curious and I will find out more and either get a second opinion or maybe come back with some information or some articles or some research papers and say, but what about this? So I will persist in asking and advocating for myself.

Thank you to the online spaces and the feeling of this is shade. It's not just me. It's not just me having this experience. It is something that other women are going through too and other women are doing it differently or they've given me advice or they've given me hope.

Yes, and even contacts at some points. So the groups are specifically located in places. There are some worldwide groups, but there are, for example, groups in Sweden or groups in Latin America or even US. And then they share also contacts of doctors who they know that they are well trained and they prescribed, you know, things based on symptoms. And, you know, like that also functions as knowledge sharing.

Contact sharing so they can but I found it like a kind of resistance as you said and I am not going to accept this narrative or that I need to carry. Another thing that I see on the medical field for women is that when someone says you didn't do enough we tend to say yeah that's that's right I didn't go to a gym enough I don't eat clean enough I don't do this enough and we women are doing all the things all the time.

So I don't accept that what's happening is my fault. It is my nature. This is going to happen. But if you have information or you know more about yourself, then you can have a normal life. So I don't accept that my life should be, you know, like, into pieces from one day to the other because I need to care without medicine, without help, without doctor's guidance.

No one should accept that. It's not fair.

It was such a great point that you made earlier in the conversation around, you know, we've got this kind of excitement around longevity and so many people talking about living long, living healthy lives, we've got theories about it, we've got people who are specialising in that and then thinking about the female experience of, well, if I am going to be going through perimenopause or the menopausal transition in my 40s,

I may still have 40 to 50 years of my life that I want to live in a healthy body and a sharp mind. And how am I supporting that? And how do I view that change then, right? As a gateway to a different phase rather than the end of everything and then me just suffering for the next 40 to 50 years. And so this change of how we see our lives compared to kind of the Western youth veneration, idolisation of women in their early 20s and then basically, you know, downhill from there.

Yes, I see that the narrative is like, there are your golden years what you can produce and reproduce yourself and then all the rest is just you know, like the rest of it. There is some really really small percentage of your life that you can reproduce yourself and that's okay like it's part of your life. But then you have all the rest and all the rest needs or deserves to be lived with dignity.

But then again, the medical framing is giving you, for example, help to have a baby or freeze your eggs or you do all these kinds of things. And then with that period passed, then you're on your own. And for me, it's terrible, to be honest, when I research these things. For me, it's terrible to know. And it's terrible to see how it's framed in the sense of sexual health at some point just sexual health maybe loss of desire of sexual desire.

It is not the only thing that is happening, right? It can happen. It doesn't happen to everyone. It happened to people who are not in treatment. But also we are not talking enough about what happens at work. There are almost no companies with menopause and menopause programs where you can for example take some days to be at home or have some courses to understand how to work with your leadership because there's this brain fog thing or the capacity to kind of hide your anger about things, right? We are not receiving enough support from companies even. So you have women who have brilliant careers and they are leading many, many people and they have really, really big teams that they're leading. And from one day to the other, they start to be less involved because they don't know how to approach certain things.

When you see studies about women's brain during perimenopause and menopause, it's like it's all knit. So it's all red because your brain is creating new connections. So it's kind of, it's the parallel of a baby's brain when they are learning everything and when they are exploring everything and you know and we are supposed to function as if we were 20 with the leadership that we have in our 40s that doesn't work either and we are not talking enough about that.

You started off by saying that second phase of life deserves to be lived with dignity. But for me, there's also something about deserves to be lived with fun and with health and with inspiration and with adventure and with curiosity, right? It's so much more than just like resigning myself to okay, well, this is it now and let me carry on that sense of sparkliness, that sense of aliveness is something that I think is also so worth nourishing and actively like I'm imagining a little flame of blowing on our feeding and stoking that fire of aliveness.

And so when you're saying the impacts and various aspects of ourselves, whether that is a workplace intervention, whether that is in sexuality or how we view our bodies or how we take care of our bodies or how we support ourselves or community or with health or with exercise to give us that feeling of I'm actually living my life. I'm autonomous and in ownership and I'm creating and I'm making and I deserve to have that space and that feeling and that energy in my life.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that we also need to take this narrative to families, to be honest, so they can also support what is happening. I meant the dignity on the medical space, because it seemed at some point that you're... So, for example, the other day I saw a material, I don't remember who it was, but they were talking that Doctors had in the US a code to talk about women in perimenopause and menopause was a WW. It was a whining woman.

So you are understood as the woman who doesn't stop and ask questions and you can get rid of and you're whining and you're complaining and it is because we don't have answers, right? So even for research, it is a question of dignity or living our lives to the fullest. The second half of our life, not like the last five years, even if that was the last five years. We are expected to be productive in the same way that we were before. And it's just a matter of listening to your body, understanding what you need, doing what you do with the things that you have, and it will be okay. It is not the decline, the end of your sexual life. It is not the end of your productive life.

It is not the end of all the things that you want to do. It is not like your body will break from one day to the other. But it seems that the narrative that we are consuming all the time is that you're old now. So you need to take your space as an old lady. And that's not true. And that's not fair also. But yeah, I agree with you that we have the time and the flame to create and to explore and to change our life if we want.

It is also interesting that most divorce rates are really high during period of menopause and menopause because suddenly you are married to a person that doesn't understand and tells you, you are a different person. Yes, I am a different person. And you should have known. And most of them say, I didn't know. I didn't know.

I don't have anything about pre menopause. And that's something, another conversation that we need to have. What are the conversation in the family about this topic on what is going to change, at least for a certain period of time. And then when menopause comes, that's okay. It's all right. It is a peaceful time. Like you don't have these changes anymore.

But I feel that women are really alone during perimenopause, which is a kind of new word. That's the other thing. We didn't speak about perimenopause 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But it exists and it can last 10 years, 8 years. So it's a really, really important phase.

Yeah. And I think so useful, you're talking about how do we have language for this in our families? But for me, there's also an interesting thing around education, basic education. You know, when we think about biology lessons at school for children, what we talk about in terms of women is very limited and mostly about reproduction versus the actual phases of what else might happen or pleasure or sexuality. there's a piece of, what are we teaching children? As you say, there's a piece of normalising that in the workplace. And then there's a piece of having conversations, mother to daughter, generation to generation within families of normalising that experience.

There's been recently so much good work that's been done around period health and celebrating menstruation or normalising it or cycle tracking or know rituals for young girls now when they start bleeding and you know, I'm Looking forward to having a menopause party on the day when I hit 12 months, but that's not a very usual thing to do. It's not a very ceremonial expression at the moment in our culture, and maybe it is in some parts of the world, but at the moment for us there's not really a kind of a marked transition or a party or a celebration or any kind of crowning or, you know, kind of way of showing I've come through that and being in that in some kind of a joyful or way of acknowledgement.

And so interesting to think about this piece of conversation in different ways and how we enter that next phase.

Yes, absolutely. Well, I would love to have one now that you're saying that, you know, a menopause party.

Yeah, we're gonna start the movement. I got to seven months a while back and I was like, I'm getting there. Starting to think about what flavour cake I'd have, but then I had a bleed and started again.

Yes, absolutely. Well, that's something that I talk about in my introduction. I talk a little bit about my personal experience and I say when I had my first periods, then I received flowers, and I was secretly introduced to this community where we have fads and we have all the things and you're kind of, you feel that you're entering the womanhood, let's say. But it's not the same for perimenopause and menopause. And I think that's because how we talk about menopausal women who are old, right? At least in Western communities. There are many, many communities that think about perimenopause and menopause as the age of knowledge or even, like you reach that age, right? And they are respected. It is a respectful thing to happen to you. But not in our Western societies, because again, I think it's framed on reproductive, productive value, sexual life, assets. We should be in our 20s forever, right?

I think it's not fairly framed, to be honest.

Yeah, so almost if we pull apart or maybe let me say that differently if we layer our fears of ageing and our almost distaste for it or our inability to be with ageing humans in general, but women particularly in the Western world, and we kind of conflate that together with menopause, then it's another thing that is marking that transition into ageing. And I think there's such a lot here around how we see age, how we see seniority, how we see death in the white Western world that all plays a part in the narrative around ageing women and menopause.

Yes. I think there's this fear of getting older, to be honest, to not conform to the ideal of youth and beauty. Seems that you need to resist, to fight it. At least on the outside. But then on the inside, maybe, you feel really bad, you can't really do anything, but then you look young. So that's OK. I think that has a lot to be with the male gaze, to be honest. That's something that in feminist studies is talked about a lot, this male gaze where we need to be perfect and forever young. But there's a lot of beauty on this transition, I would say. I see, based on my interviews that many, many women are tuning again to their knowledge around their bodies, that maybe they were disconnected for many, years because they were raising children or growing their careers. And it's a call to their bodies again, to reflect on what you feel or what you need or how to take care of yourself during these years.

So many women at the end said, it was good because I came back to myself at some point. I was caring for others so much for many, many, years. And then I had this call to look inside. So I think it's a beautiful transition. And there are many, many things to help out there. But then you need to find your people. Again, I think that the worst thing that you can do is to live this by yourself not knowing and full of questions and then you don't receive any answers. So for me it circles back to community again when I research many things. Regarding women and women's health and women in society. Everything comes back again to we need to create community, right?

I want to ask you a little bit more about this piece of the male gaze and how that translates into kind of, because there's been a couple of things that we've talked about in terms of who has funds, who is creating, who is treating, who has been historically doctors, who has studied. And now we're at this point of how do we create change in the systems and the structures that are not serving women, not supporting women in the way that they could. If we think about how we as individuals can create change in a system that is built on the male preference and experience, what's your recommendation based on the findings and the work that you've done?

So we have a lot to change to be honest.

Let's go. We've got 10 minutes left of this podcast. Give us all your wisdom.

So I would say women supporting women is the first. So I know, for example, great programs of women investing in women's ventures, right? And you can say, well, this is not ideal because it should be diverse. I really understand that. But women are underfunded and underpaid. So if one of us has money, it would be great if you can, for example women entrepreneurs doing this important work in technology around menopause because they are there but they don't have money and they can't continue so that would be one. Then it is really important to have women in different fields and I know that this is not new but it is really important for example to have.

Women at this stage where I'm researching, saying I'm going to research women health issues, right? I could have researched many, many things, but then I decided to do that, like to give this to the world, even if it is a small portion of something that we need to discuss more broadly, at least it sparked some conversations around. And it's important to have people, to have women on that money table where we decide what to give money to. And I think what happens is that it is underfunded because there is some kind of idea that this is not relevant. Because we are suffering in silence, because we are not asking, for example, our governments to put more effort into this or to say like, is not possible that doctors receive half a day training on this, if that affects half of the population in the middle of their lives.

So for me, and I think this is a really Latin American answer, to me is to make noise. That's what we do. For example, the Green Wave or the things that we like the social movement in Latin America, they make noise. They make like a agalio as Pope Francis said.

We need to do noise, to make noise, to be there to say, we need money for this. If you have money to invest, please invest in women. But again, this is something that we should discuss more broadly into society, into media, but also policy and also with our doctors and to say, I don't accept this. I don't accept you telling me that this is normal.

You're telling me that I need to carry, you're telling me that I need to suffer in silence, that I need to hide and to be perfect and to act as if nothing happens. We changed that narrative with periods. Not long ago, like 20 years, 10 years ago, you should be silent about this. And now I see women saying, I'm on my period. I don't feel well. I'm not going to do this or that. I need to be at home. I need to have my space.

And that's okay. And that's respected. So we need to do the same. So people, for example, in position of power that can create some things for their employees, for example, in their companies, the conversation should do it. So for me, it's like in general making noise. And then in the particular, we have a lot of things to do.

Yeah, making noise almost on the micro and the macro, right? And thinking about where's your sphere of influence. So whether that be at your doctor's appointment, whether that be posting or sharing an article or talking to your nieces or nephews or your children about it, or if you are in a leadership position, talking to your team about it, being visible within that, and then as well as donating, investing, supporting, researching.

Going into different fields, being active within that lobbying education system. So I think for everybody, there's a takeaway here of, where are the spaces that I can make noise? Where are the spaces that I can ask or keep on talking about it or maybe get over my own embarrassment to keep on demanding or sharing or reading or educating myself?

Yes, absolutely. I would say that's the clue. We can always talk more about it. That's the other thing. You don't even need to tell your personal story. It's just like, I understand that this is happening. How can I support you more on this? Like we have in many, many companies, we have a room for new mothers, for example. And that's okay. We can have a room for menopausal women or you can have pay time off for this or even work from home. There's always a solution. And in the doctor's appointment, yes, I will say, yes, we need to fight back. I know that it's a difficult thing to say nowadays because it feels like kind of violence, but it's just to say, no, this is not correct. This is part of a wider thing that we need to investigate. It's not just the shoulder or it's not just my ear or whatever.

Coming back to the communities, I will say, we lost that sense of community after COVID, I think, at some point. We are more on this idea of we need to be connected all the time, but we don't speak often about important things like this one. We're all connected, saying things all the time, but it's important for you and the others to be part of a community. There are many, many communities out there and in every social media platform, even journalists, researchers talking about this, doctors in some points as well. You can find someone wherever you are.

So I'm going to ask you for two links that I would love to put on the notes. And one of them is if you have any platforms of women supporting women in terms of investment, maybe that would be something that we could amplify and highlight. And the other one, if there is an online community that you could recommend or a resource that is your favourite resource that has emerged during your research, then I can put it down below as well.

Yes, so in terms of community and research, I really like what a US journalist did. She's, I don't remember the name of the community, but she has a book. Her name is Thompson Fadal, and she's a journalist. And she discovered this menopause word when she was on it and she started to write books about it and then she has an event as well where they talk about all these things, all these aspects of menopause. That's really, really interesting.

There's also another book called Factor about menopause that is really, good. Also based on research and really well written. I liked it a lot.

And then for investing, I have only, unfortunately, only Nordic example. It is called One of the Girls Has Money Now, and it's a Swedish program. Yes, a Swedish program that is to help women to invest in other women, on women's ventures. And it's really, really interesting. And I also love what, I don't remember her surname, but her name is Tori and she's also an US. Yes, her first 100k. Yeah, that's the name. I really like what she does. But because she also flags this idea of patriarchy, not knowing, saying like, this is difficult for you, right? Like this, all money related things are difficult for you. And she's shows no it's not, it's really not. You can do whatever.

Yes, financial feminist. So I really like their work on the metaphors, kind of deconstructs investing and working with money. And I think there's such an interesting link that you've been talking about of underfunding and underpaid and then underrepresented and then undereducated, right? And women do have this complicated relationship with earning or money or success. Have success, but not too much success, have money, but not too much money and often being stuck in the middle of too much and not enough in so many aspects of our lives. But seeing money here or investment as something that can serve and help and uplift and amplify and elevate is also such a nice frame on it. And I think will be so helpful for people of, yeah, ask for the pay rise. Yeah, ask for the money, make the money, make it unashamedly because what I see over and over again is when women have money, they do beautiful things with it.

Yes, absolutely. I think that's what all of them talk about the most. Money is freedom. It's not something that you should, you know, like, no, no, I don't need this. No, like you are why you are in your productive years. You need to ask for money because we are underpaid, underfunded. Then we have issues with pensions and retirement. And that starts to build up.

So it is important to understand investing. Also, as you said, I see women doing these beautiful things on, OK, I'm going to help other women in their ventures or the products that they are creating around women's health or women's life. It's really, really important to take care of those things. For me, I see women study a lot of things, but mostly not about them.

Yeah, so you know, we study a lot of things, but to help others and not to help ourselves with our bodies or what we really need or to ask for these kinds of things or to create wealth for ourselves. I see many women also victims of violence or people who can't move from their homes because they haven't built wealth at some point because they lived on this care system caring for others then like you don't have anything for yourself so I think it's important. Also being part of those communities is also important for us you have people all the time saying take care of yourself do this and that I have this tip on this person on investment or in medical or you know that kind of thing

Yeah. I feel like there are so many conversations that we could continue. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time, Gabriella. Is there anything you would want women to know before we close this conversation? Anything I haven't asked you that you think would be a valuable addition to this conversation?

Well, I think women are powerful. So trust yourself, but surround yourself with other women. You got this. And you got many, many things for sure, I know. So you got this as well. But surround yourself with people who understand you and yeah, and reclaim your power. I would say that, yeah.

Good words to close. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you and the work you do in the world.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me again. It was my pleasure.

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Maude Burger-Smith