Latinas in Midlife Own the Numbers
I went looking for the numbers. Here’s what I found: porque la que busca, encuentra.
[TL;DR] I went full periodista rabbit hole on a Mayo Clinic study, and what I found confirmed everything we’ve been living through: midlife women are walking away from careers because the weight of feeling invisible runs too deep. I break down the numbers, the cultural realities, and why Ana and I built Her Wisdom Era.
The data on Latinas in midlife tells a story no one is connecting for us.
We enter perimenopause earlier.
We carry more caregiving hours than any other group.
We own 2.1 million businesses.
I went looking for the numbers. Here’s what I found: porque la que busca, encuentra.
But first, I’m putting my journo hat on for this one, because this essay needs it. This is not your typical menopause rant. It shows, in actual numbers, what happens when every system is designed without us in mind, and what it looks like when we decide to build something anyway.
And what it takes to stay visible.
Last year, as Ana and I began researching to make sure Her Wisdom Era was filling a real gap for Latinas, I kept thinking about an article I had read in the BBC a few months earlier. I had just come back from London, where I spent a fabulous week supporting my former colleague Rosie Nixon on her new venture, Rosie’s Reinvention Retreat. There, aside from resuming my beloved, childless, uninterrupted, diagonal nights’ sleep, I sat in on conversations with experts who opened their hearts and shared their most vulnerable midlife experiences. I was 46 and not sure I needed to hear that much about menopause yet, para ser honesta.
I needed to shift that convoluted energy toward healing and to learn more about midlife in general.
To my surprise, a few months later, I was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease, an autoimmune condition caused by hyperthyroidism that was, basically, a hormonal reguero. Between mood swings and hospitalizations, all of this expedited my desire to figure out what I was going to do next with the career I had spent the past twenty years building so intentionally. I needed to shift that convoluted energy toward healing and to learn more about midlife in general.
And that’s when the clarity hit. This can’t be happening to Ana and me alone, I thought. With so many midlife health changes happening during perimenopause, which can begin anytime after 35, most of us feel exhausted and inadequate in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. Yo pensaba que tenía tiempo. Turns out my thyroid had other plans. And if you work for a big corporation in the U.S., that isolation deepens, because most workplaces have no framework for what you are going through as a woman in midlife, much less as a Latina in midlife.
For context, the UK passed its first laws allowing women to take paid menopause leave in 2025. O sea, más vale tarde que nunca, pero what took so damn long! Tranquila, it gets better… Spain has had paid “disabling menstruation days” since 2023. Meanwhile, Japan is the O.G. here because they have had menstrual leave since 1947. Only ten years after tampons were invented.
While some U.S. corporations like Adobe, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Bank of America have created specialized care support for midlife employees, the U.S. is still well behind the UK and Australia in implementing formal, standalone menopausal leave policies. Most U.S. companies fold support into enhanced healthcare benefits, flexible work arrangements, and wellness programs, if they address it at all.
But here’s where this gets personal for Latinas.
Who Forgot To Send the Memo?
[Spoiler Alert: I’m dropping some good digits here. Bear with me.] Latinas reach menopause about two years earlier than the national median age, and we experience hot flashes for an average of 8.9 years, compared to 6.5 years for white women. Let that land for a second.
You are entering perimenopause sooner, and you are living with symptoms for nearly a decade. That’s most of your forties and a significant part of your fifties spent navigating hormonal shifts that affect your sleep, your concentration, your mood, your energy, and your ability to show up at work the way you used to, all while this country’s workplace pretends none of this is happening. Las latinas siempre primeras en la fila hasta cuando duele, ¿ah?
The Mayo Clinic study that took me to the rabbit hole mentioned earlier, put a price tag on this reality: it found that menopause symptoms cost the U.S. economy $1.8 billion annually because women in midlife are leaving the workforce at staggering rates due to a lack of employer support. That number accounts for all women in the workforce. When you zoom into the Latina experience, with our earlier onset and longer symptom duration, the weight of that figure becomes even more personal.
The Unpaid Sandwicheras Club
Now add to this sancocho what our culture expects of us at this exact same stage. In our families, caregiving is not optional. ¡Dios nos libre de ese pensamiento! We hit midlife with the expectation that we will care for our elders, and many of us are also raising young children or teenagers. Researchers call this the sandwich generation effect, and for Latinas, it becomes a source of deep anxiety and depression because the load we carry is among the heaviest of any group in this country. No wonder we, las sandwicheras, feel depleted and invisible.
That is a second full-time job, one that is invisible in professional settings and unaccounted for in any economic analysis of productivity.
According to AARP data and the Family Caregiving Alliance, Latina caregivers provide an average of 30 hours of unpaid care per week, the highest intensity among all demographic groups. That is a second full-time job, one that is invisible in professional settings and unaccounted for in any economic analysis of productivity. On top of that, over 55% of Latina caregivers are also caring for children under the age of 18 while managing the care of an aging parent or relative. You are dealing with perimenopause, a full-time career, the demands of your children, and the needs of your parents, all at once, and the systems around you are not acknowledging any of it.
The financial toll compounds every bit of this. The average family caregiver spends about $7,200 annually in out-of-pocket costs, and for Latino families, according to AARP, this figure often represents a higher percentage of total household income compared to other groups. The financial strain sits encima the emotional one, and 60% of women report having to make a significant change to their work lives because of caregiving demands, whether that means cutting back hours or stepping away from work entirely.
The absurdity of it all is that we are expected to show up at work as if nothing is happening at home. Like, ¡Échale ketchup al sándwich!, and keep going.
And Still, We Build…
Here is what makes all of this so remarkable, and so maddening. Despite everything I just described, Latinas are producing at extraordinary levels. We own and grow 2.1 million businesses in the United States. These Latina-owned businesses employ almost a million people. We account for 30.2% of the total growth in the U.S. labor force since 2010, a figure that outpaces our share of the population by a wide margin.
Mindblown yet? Read those numbers out loud again and hold them next to the reality of earlier perimenopause, 30 hours of weekly unpaid caregiving, and a healthcare system that has no cultural framework for your experience. We are building in spite of all of it, and the broader conversation about women and work has not caught up to what we are doing or what we are going through. ¡Ni se entera!
I can almost hear my mom saying “mándame más, si más me merezco.”
Sources: Mayo Clinic, AARP, Family Caregiving Alliance, UCLA, Bank of America, Pew Research Center
Our Why
To me, every data point in this essay tells a story about invisibility. The workplace doesn’t see your hormonal transition. The healthcare system doesn’t account for your earlier onset or longer symptoms. The cultural expectation of caregiving renders 30 hours of your labor a week invisible. And the extraordinary economic contribution we’re making despite all of it goes unrecognized in the broader conversation about women and work.
Her Wisdom Era exists in spite of all of this, and because of all of this. We are here because we believe, deeply, that we have to be part of building what was never built for us. And because every 30 seconds, a young Latino steps into their adulthood and the workforce. Yet, the workforce is only as strong as its mentors. As these millions of young people rise, we have to make sure their career dreams are matched by the grounded, strategic leadership that only midlife experience and wisdom can provide. WE are that bridge (no pressure!).
The first step toward changing any of this is refusing to let it stay invisible. That’s what Her Wisdom Era is for. Las Sandwicheras en la midlife somos más y no tenemos miedo.
Thank you for showing up. ¿Seguimo’?
Mucho love,
Cristy
P.S. Did anything you just read here surprise you? We’d love to hear from you in the comments or el chat.