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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Katherine Heslop

Fuming Carol Vorderman says Tory MPs 'don't give a stuff' about menopausal working women

Carol Vorderman said ministers "don't give a stuff" about the menopause after she read heart-wrenching testimony from women suffering in the work place.

The Countdown presenter, 62, a patron for campaign group Menopause Mandate, relayed experiences from working class women on how they had been treated by employers, as she attended a Women and Equalities Committee hearing.

One women, who works in the care sector said at one point it "all got too much" and she contemplated taking her life, while another told how she was forced to resign from a job she loved over her symptoms, such as brain fog, with her employer claiming she was incapable of doing her job.

Carol Vorderman said ministers "don't give a stuff" about menopause in the workplace (Parliament TV)

Carol, who was sitting alongside Menopause Mandate chair and TV presenter Mariella Frostrup and other experts, for the hearing on menopause and the workplace, said: "These are working class women. They don't have the voice, they don't necessarily have the confidence or the ability and the structure and the process to go through."

She went on: "There stories go on and on and on, hundreds of them have been coming in. These women have to be listened to and to and it has to change, we keep coming back to the same conversation. It's the 21st century and where are the ministers?

Maria Caulfield was criticised by Carol (PA)

"It shows me they don't have any willingness, it shows me that actually they don't give a stuff about what's happening to all these women, and they don't care."

The TV presenter had earlier called out MP Maria Caulfield, minister for women in department for business and trade for not attending the committee meeting.

She also accused Kemi Badenoch, women and equalities minister of "patronising statements" when she spoke on the menopause to the committee earlier this month, and defended the government' rejection of a cross-party call to help women going through it.

Carol is a familiar face on daytime TV and is known for Countdown (Rex)

Ms Badenoch had said that calls for a pilot on menopause leave were from a "left wing perspective", and said she didn't think "creating another pilot on more leave" would help.

Earlier this week, Ms Caulfield said on Twitter that she had sent alternative dates to the committee, for when she could attend the hearing.

Speaking to the committee this afternoon, Carol said: "These are the two women in government who are meant to representing the female population. I was disgusted personally by both of them."

Carol has previously spoken of how the menopause bought on depression for her.

Carol sits beside experts and campaigners at the committee hearing (Parliament TV)

In 2016 she said: s: “I got to my 50s – and I love my 50s – but the menopause is a bit challenging.

"It was last year particularly. I had six months when I was really low. I’m not a depressed person but in that space of time I was genuinely depressed.

“It got to Christmas and I thought, ‘God, what on Earth is wrong? I can’t bear this’.

“I analysed exactly the times that it happened and it was linked directly to the times that are important to a woman every month.

"I thought, ‘That’s what it is’.”

The menopause starts when a woman’s periods stop and her ovaries lose their reproductive function.

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