What do you know about perimenopause?

Watching her mother struggle with perimenopausal symptoms in her early 40s – due to the removal of her womb – inspired our classmate Priyanka to kick-start the conversation about the idea of a perimenopause awareness campaign. Priyanka shared that she had felt extremely helpless watching her mother in pain from her countless hospital visits, as she had no idea what was happening to her body.

As young women in our 20s, we were ourselves shocked to only find out about the existence of perimenopause when we heard Priyanka’s story. With 1.1 billion women set to be postmenopausal by 2025, the quietness around menopause and its precursor, perimenopause, remains surprisingly loud.

This silence leaves countless women unprepared for a natural, yet pivotal, life transition, surrounded by a culture of silence and stigma. Perimenopause, a phase fraught with its unique set of challenges, symbolises not a decline, but a natural progression in a woman’s life, akin to a second puberty. Perimenopause heralds a period of significant change, hitting women aged 45 to 55, though it can start as early as the mid-30s. It brings hormonal shifts, irregular periods, and symptoms mirroring menopause.

Dr June Tan Sheren from Osler Health International underscores the diversity of the perimenopausal experience, noting that symptoms and severity vary from one woman to the next, with some facing the whole host of symptoms, from the physical to the emotional, and others facing none at all.

Research by the awareness campaign Beyond The Pause revealed that 45 per cent of the 177 Singapore women surveyed, aged 21 to 60, were unaware about perimenopause.

This lack of awareness, coupled with the stigmatisation of menopause, contributes to a culture where women often endure their symptoms in silence. Participants in focus groups expressed a desire for more information and support, confessing their reluctance to discuss their symptoms for fear of being dismissed, and having their genuine distress reduced to mere “PMS” or trivialised as “just menopause”.

Beyond The Pause is more than just an awareness campaign – it’s a movement towards empowerment and understanding. By collaborating with doctors and local women’s organisations to produce educational materials on the topic, we aim to equip perimenopausal women and their families with the
knowledge and tools needed to navigate this phase.

The campaign has already made significant strides, with a presence at events such as the Singapore Women’s Festival in March. The personal interactions at our booth allowed for deep, meaningful conversations, providing attendees with insights and reassurance about perimenopause. Many elderly women told us how heartened they were to see that we were raising awareness about perimenopause. They recalled it as a confusing and isolating time where they didn’t understand their bodies, and no one understood what they were going through.

This only serves to bolster our purpose, which is to destigmatise conversations around women’s health and mental well-being – and we believe that change begins with us.

For more information, visit @beyondthepause_sg on Instagram.

Text See Wenwei, Eden Loke, Priyanka Tamilarasan, and Nicia Leong