Women already make just 84 cents to a man’s dollar. They also face additional earnings losses, should they become mothers, in the form of what’s been called the “child penalty“—with recent findings indicating a loss up to $500,000 over a 30-year career.
Now comes a study asserting that women experience yet another drop in earnings at the end of their child-bearing years, and researchers have dubbed it the “menopause penalty.”
Economists at the University College London, University of Bergen, Stanford University and University of Delaware calculated that women experience a 4.3% reduction in their earnings, on average, in the four years following a menopause diagnosis, with losses rising to 10% by the fourth year.
To come to their conclusions thus far, researchers analyzed population-wide data from Sweden and Norway. It included medical records that identified the date of the first menopause diagnosis of women born between 1961-1968 who had a menopause-related diagnosis between the ages of 45 and 55.
About a third of women in menopause get a formal diagnosis, lead author and UCL professor Gabriella Conti tells Fortune, and focusing the study on those with an actual medical diagnosis rather than within a certain age range was a way to look at something as “visible and recorded” as having a baby (as with the child penalty).
“So it’s not saying that every woman, when she has menopause, has a wage loss of 10%—because many women have menopause and don’t even have severe symptoms,” Conti explains. “So this is looking at the woman who has a severe menopause, in the sense that she has symptoms. It could be perimenopause, postmenopausal bleeding, and various different conditions.” Once the diagnosis is in place, researchers found, is typically when various related conditions are diagnosed, thereby affecting work productivity.
“So, for example, we see that these women are also diagnosed with symptoms related to tiredness, headaches, migraine, feeling acute stress, feeling depressed. And when you have this variety of morbidities, you’re probably not able to work as well as you were working before—you don’t feel as well, and your productivity might not be as high as before,” she says. To find evidence of that, she says, the researchers observed working hours as a reflection of productivity.
The fall in earnings during menopause, they found, was primarily driven by less time working.
And the likelihood of claiming disability insurance benefits increased by 4.8% in the four years following a menopause diagnosis, suggesting that menopause symptoms significantly impact women’s work patterns, the team said.
Although the current findings were limited to the two Scandinavian countries, Conti believes they are translatable. “My sense is that, to the extent that you know the symptoms are the same across different countries, and that the biology is the same, then the extent of the penalty is likely to depend on the context—the healthcare context, whether you have good access to care, whether you have treatment, and the workplace context,” she says. Their research shows, she explains, that a workplace’s attitudes toward menopause plays a big role in these outcomes.
“If you are able to accommodate women [in menopause], and to create a supportive workplace, then it can also make a big difference,” she says, pointing, as an example, to a new UK certification for menopause-friendly workplaces—which does count one U.S. company, CVS, among those certified.
It’s why, as a result of their lost-wage findings, the researchers are calling for increased menopause awareness—as well as better support and access to care.
“All women go through the menopause, but each woman’s experience is unique,” Conti said in a news release. “We looked at women with a medical menopause diagnosis, so these women may have experienced more severe symptoms than the general population. Our study shows how the negative impacts of the menopause penalty vary greatly between women.”
Those most affected by the drop in earnings and hours worked were women without a university degree, already making lower incomes.
“Graduate women tend on average to be better informed of menopause symptoms and more aware of their treatment options,” said Conti. “This may mean they are better equipped to adapt and continue working throughout their menopause.”
She added, “Our findings suggest that better information and improved access to menopause-related care are crucial to eliminating the menopause penalty and ensuring that workplaces can better support women during this transition.”
Thailand, along with the rest of Southeast Asia, got some temporary relief when the U.S. President Donald Trump chose to delay his “Liberation Day” tariffs by 90 days. Now, the country’s U.S.-bound exports only have a 10% tariff, as opposed to the 36% threatened by Trump.
Asian markets have gone on a wild ride since Trump first unveiled his reciprocal tariffs on April 2, falling and rising according to the president’s statements. Thailand’s benchmark SET index fell by 9% between April 2 and April 9, only to rally after Trump announced his tariff pause. Still, the index has yet to recover from the “Liberation Day” hit.
“Reciprocal tariffs, we thought, were excessively high,” said Victor Cheng, the CEO of Delta Electronics Thailand, last week before Trump announced his tariff pause.
U.S. actions were causing “anxiety and great concern,” Cheng said, but noted that customers had yet to change or cancel any orders due to the tariffs and were instead adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Cheng added later, after Trump paused his tariffs, that customers are using the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs to “stock up”.
The CEO also explained why his U.S. customers, and not his company, “will have to bear the extra tariff on top of the original selling price.” He points out that most of Delta Electronics Thailand’s products are classed as “free on board”, which means responsibility passes from the seller—his company—to the buyer—the U.S. customer.
Who pays for tariffs is a major political point in the debate around Trump’s trade policy, with the president and his supporters claiming that the foreign government or company pays for the tariffs. Most trade professionals note that, in fact, it’s the importer that pays: it may then pass some, if not all, of the extra cost to end-consumers. (Large importers, like Walmart, might also be able to force foreign suppliers to take a haircut on price)
Still, Cheng was concerned that steep U.S. tariffs would still indirectly affect his company, by placing additional burdens on his customers and spurring inflationary pressures.
“Tariffs will definitely have some impact. A mild level will be OK…but high tariffs beyond 15% will be difficult to take by any single party and will cause disruption,” Cheng said in a follow-up conversation after Trump’s tariff pause.
Chen noted that, in the days since “Liberation Day,” Thailand’s government had reached out to industry associations and individual companies to understand how tariffs would affect their business. He predicted that Thailand will lower tariffs on U.S. goods and purchase more U.S. commodities, while coordinating with its fellow Southeast Asian governments to negotiate with the U.S. as a bloc.
Thailand will send a delegation to the U.S to start trade negotiations next week, the government said on Monday.
Focusing on EVs and data centers
Delta Electronics Thailand makes and distributes electronics, namely power components, that are used in items including electric vehicles and data centers. The company currently works with European and U.S.-based carmakers, but Cheng said Delta Electronics Thailand is starting to explore working with Chinese EV makers that have set up manufacturing capacity in Thailand.
EV adoption is growing in countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, in part due to government incentives and the debut of affordable Chinese-made cars. Southeast Asia is proving to be an attractive market for Chinese carmakers, due to its proximity to China and its more Beijing-friendly policy stance.
Electric cars made up 33.6% of all new car registrations in Singapore last year, up from 18% in 2023, according to government data. In neighboring Malaysia, EV sales jumped 19% to break 45,000; EV sales more than doubled in Indonesia to reach 43,000 units.
Cheng was optimistic that Delta Electronics Thailand was going to be able to tap into that expanding demand.
“Here in Southeast Asia, we’ve seen some success with EV chargers. We’re seeing the sales of that—whether it’s AC or DC—gradually growing here,” Cheng explained.
Regarding its data center business, Delta Electronics Thailand said U.S. companies are a significant customer base but declined to give specific names beyond AI chip leader Nvidia.
What is Delta Electronics Thailand?
Delta Electronics Thailand is a subsidiary of Delta Electronics, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. A booming EV industry helped drive up revenues, profits and share prices, which at one point helped make the subsidiary more valuable than its parent company.
Delta Thailand Electronics also spent much of 2024 as Thailand’s most valuable company, with a peak market value of around $64.1 billion last November.
Yet Delta’s share price has been on the slide since then, particularly after the company reported lower-than-exported earnings in mid-February. The company’s shares have lost more than 50% of their value since the November peak. The SET has fallen just over 27% over the same period.
Yugi Takeshima, an equity research analyst at Maybank Securities, warned in a March report that rising costs and the uncertainty over how a new global minimum tax on corporate earnings could serve as a headwind to earnings growth.
The global minimum tax is meant to discourage multinational companies from booking excessive profits in low-tax jurisdictions, by ensuring companies pay a minimum level of tax on their income in each jurisdiction that they operate in.
Delta Electronics Thailand was previously subject to a 5.5% tax in 2023. That will rise to 15% starting this year as Thailand imposed a “top-up” tax in January as the country seeks entry into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Cheng has previously commented that Delta Electronics Thailand’s share prices may have been overvalued, noting that the price-to-earnings ratio had “gone through the roof.”
He reaffirmed that sentiment in his conversation with Fortune and noted that share prices had gotten “a little bit too speculative.”
Cheng said he was focused on “business fundamentals” amid the tariff situation. Delta Electronics Thailand’s revenue is still at a healthy level, he said, and still growing year-on-year. Revenue for 2024 reached 164.7 billion baht ($4.9 billion), a 12.5% increase from the year before. The company’s 2023 revenue of 146.4 billion baht ($4.4 billion) was 23.5% higher than 2022 and was driven by its Mobility Group (EV) segment.
But even as EV growth moderates, Cheng remains positive on AI-related infrastructure. At the start of the year, the company projected “double-digit revenue growth” driven by investments.
“AI build out is a big impetus for revenue support this year and we also see some positive benefit for profits as well,” he said.
Good morning! Blue Origin’s flight takes off, married women could be disenfranchised by new legislation, and there’s power in starting from scratch in the WNBA.
– Fresh start. The 2025 WNBA draft is today, and choosing players for the first time in a collegiate draft will be the Golden State Valkyries, the new expansion team starting play this season. It’s one of the only things the Valkyries are doing traditionally. The Bay Area-based team sold 10,000 season tickets—the first team in the league to do so. They signed a multi-year deal with Sephora, including naming rights for the team’s Oakland practice center, which will feature Sephora branding and products throughout its courts, locker room, and player lounge.
It’s been both harder and easier to achieve those milestones as a team building from scratch—the first to do so since 2008.
Valkyries GM Ohemaa Nyanin has seen the difference between a rebuild and a fresh start in action; she came to the Valkyries from the New York Liberty, an original WNBA franchise that was rescued from a near-death in 2019. “Recreating ‘What is Liberty basketball now?’ was really hard because people just wanted to see what they knew,” she says. “The difference here is we are creating what we want people to know. What is Valkyries basketball? We’re taking our sweet time to define that, because once you define it—coming from experience—it’s really hard to change it.”
Golden State Valkyries General Manager Ohemaa Nyanin, left, announces their new head coach Natalie Nakase, formerly a first assistant coach with the 2-time WNBA Champions, the Las Vegas Aces, at Chase Center in San Francisco on Thursday, October 10, 2024. Nakase joined the Aces in February 2022 to help head coach Beck Hammon led their team to back-to-back WNBA championships in 2022 and 2023 as well as the 2022 Commissioner’s Cup title. Nakase is the first Asian coach to lead a WNBA team. (Photo by Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Rather than focusing solely on basketball or business skills in hiring, Nyanin says her top priorities have been finding people with an entrepreneurial mindset and aptitude for problem-solving—although those skills have some overlap with the grit required in sports. “To be an entrepreneur is to create, to either thrive or fail, and regardless of the results, continue,” she says.
On the business side, president Jess Smith has been thinking equally creatively (see: that Sephora deal, plus another new one with United Airlines). Last year, she told me she was thinking about how the team can be bigger than basketball. Before the team had players, it had violet t-shirts and a partnership with the sports media brand Togethxr. Smith was considering a podcast. “What do those moments feel like when our brand is bigger than sport?” Smith said.
The Valkyries drafted most of their roster through an expansion draft in December, and with today’s collegiate draft (featuring projected No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers, who is expected to go to the Dallas Wings) will fill out the team. And they haven’t had to building everything from zero—the team has the same owners as the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Nyanin and Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase know what they don’t want to replicate: “treating athletes as just athletes,” and not full people, is the worst habit they’ve seen elsewhere, Nyanin says.
“We can write our own story now, right?” Nyanin says. “We don’t have to inherit anything.”
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
Entertainment8 years ago