Feature
Giving a voice to menopause Kelly Southworth Editor
As people age, things start to change – this is common knowledge, of course. We wrinkle, we don’t move as easily and our values evolve. It’s also common knowledge that, as we age, half of the population will go through menopause, where oestrogen drops and periods stop. Except that, unlike other normal parts of life, menopause is something rarely discussed and widely misunderstood. ‘When I first mentioned perimenopause to my husband about two years ago, he was a bit confronted. He wasn‘t brought up in a generation that talked about it and I felt a little embarrassed.’ Since hitting her 40s and perimenopause, videographer, producer, filmmaker and Carey alum Libby Chow (1993) realised how important it is to
give a voice to menopause. ‘I didn‘t even know what perimenopause was. I was really shocked. We really need to tell people about this. And everyone needs to know. Children need to know because their mothers are going through it. Men need to know about it. Workplaces need to know about it.’
L
ibby came to Carey in Year 9 on a music scholarship, and always thought she would pursue music as a career. She went onto a Bachelor of Music at La Trobe University after leaving Carey, but her love for arts and media grew so she transferred to the University of Melbourne to study Creative Arts. She did get to explore her music career later in life though, going on tour with Clare Bowditch and with another band, Minibikes.
Libby’s love for sharing stories led her to documentary filmmaking and, after working for Triple R making radio documentaries, she pursued her curiosities and forged a path into video journalism for The Age. In the early 2000s, video journalism on behalf of a newspaper was a very new role. Often the only woman in the room, Libby learnt quickly that she needed to have the courage to fight for her place at the front. ‘I wasn’t what the other journalists were used to, I was different, I was female. I soon realised that unless I counted myself in, unless I did have the guts to fight for that position, up the front and centre, I wasn‘t going to get my job done. And what‘s still with me sometimes is that feeling of needing to apologise for taking up space,’ Libby says. ‘An interesting quote from the Harvard Business Review states “gender diversity relates to more productive companies”. In other words, it‘s good, even better to have balanced gender representation. You, as a female, have as much right to be in the room as anyone else and have your voice heard. And as a boy, or a man, you can back up your female friends and ask for equal representation. Because it‘s proven in research that better outcomes are reached for everyone when there is a diversity of genders involved.’
Tim Chilvers, Chair of the Board; Libby Chow (1993); and Kaitlin Young, Gender Equity Group Co-ordinator; at Carey‘s 2022 International Women’s Day event. 12 | Torch
