🤖 Designing AI, While My Hormones Try to Sabotage Me

Because brain fog doesn’t mean brilliance is gone—it just means we need a fan, a nap, and maybe a debugging buddy.

Author

TechSheThink Founder
August 19, 2025

By TechSheThink | July 2025

🧠 Hormones vs. High-Tech: Round One

Imagine this: you’re building a machine learning model, sipping your third coffee, and suddenly your brain short-circuits. Did you forget the function call? Or did menopause just crank your mental RAM to “potato mode”?

Welcome to the reality of designing AI while your hormones go full chaos mode.
It's sweaty. It's foggy. It's under-acknowledged. And yet? It's survivable—and even hilarious—if we stop pretending it’s not happening.

With 1.3 billion women reaching menopause by 2030, it’s time tech started building systems that include the people building them.

#PerimenopauseInTech

🐌 How Companies Are Handling Menopause: Slow, Clunky, Barely Beta

In an industry that can automate your fridge and optimize your blood sugar, you'd expect menopause support to be, well…smarter.

But most companies are still in early alpha.

  • Lisa Health’s “Midday” app uses AI to help women manage symptoms with sensor-driven tracking.

  • Virtue Health’s Caria connects users to community care.

  • But beyond these examples? It’s mostly radio silence.

The British Menopause Society (2025) urges corporate support, but many firms still treat menopause like a glitch in the matrix instead of a fundamental life phase.

Flexible work?
Menopause leave?
Hot flash recovery rooms?
Still mostly dreams in the cloud.

#MenopauseAndWork

🧪 The STEM Factor: When Brain Fog Meets Bias

In Deep Tech, AI, and STEM, where women make up just 35% of the workforce (CIO, 2025), menopause isn’t just a health issue—it’s a retention crisis.

  • 51% of women worry they'll be seen as “less capable” due to symptoms like poor concentration or memory slips (CIPD, 2023).

  • 73% report gender bias in tech environments (SPR, 2024).

  • It’s hard enough being the only woman in the room. Add in brain fog, and it’s like being the only one without a password.

Menopause shouldn’t be the final push that drives talented women out of the field—especially when they’re finally in positions to lead, mentor, and innovate.

📊 Chaos by the Numbers (with a Side of Fury)

Let’s talk stats that should trigger every HR system alert:

🧾 Statistic

🔎 Insight

74%

Women aged 40–65 report symptoms affecting work (SRI, Lisa Health)

33%

Experience severe impact on quality of life (Women’s Health Concern, 2025)

$150 billion

Annual global productivity loss due to menopause (AARP, 2024)

17%

Have considered leaving work due to symptoms

10%

Were forced to leave because of them

73%

Faced gender bias in tech in the past year

If we can predict user behavior with AI, surely we can predict what happens when we ignore the needs of half the workforce?

#NeurodivergenceAndMenopause

💡 Turning the Chaos into Code (and Support)

We’re not here to moan—we’re here to optimize. Here’s how we turn hormonal hell into tech-fueled hope:

🔁 Flexi-Hours & Fan Breaks

Let women work around their peaks and valleys.
"Too hot to think? Cool. Literally. Take 10."

🧑‍🏫 Train the Managers

"Hey boss, I’m running slow today" shouldn't feel career-ending.
Let empathy be part of the workflow.

🤖 AI to the Rescue

Apps like Midday and Caria help women track symptoms like developers track bugs.
Smarter health = smarter workdays.

🎤 Normalize the Conversation

Host a “Menopause & Machine Learning” lunch-and-learn.
(Half jokes, full support.)

📜 Update the Policies

Add menopause to your DEI and HR strategies.
Retention is cheaper than recruitment, folks.

#HRPolicyForWomen

🔧 Your Hormonal Hack Pack

If you’re juggling variables and vitamins, here’s your cheat sheet:

#MenopauseSupportInTech

🎉 Final Thought: Hormonal, Hilarious, and Still Brilliant

If your AI model just collapsed and you’re crying into your tea because hormones are real and life is hard—
you are not broken.
You are becoming.

At TechSheThink, we believe menopause shouldn’t derail your career—it should help rewrite the code of what supportive, inclusive tech looks like.

So, whether you’re debugging Python while melting, leading product strategy on two hours of sleep, or accidentally replacing a server name with your cat’s name (again)...

You’re still changing the world.
Sweaty. Foggy. Fabulous.

#TechAndHormones

🙌 Call to Action: Build Tech That Sweats with Us

💬 Share your story using #HormonalButHeroic
🔗 Visit TechSheThink Linktree linktr.ee/TechSheThink
🎙️ Invite us to speak at your workplace
💌 Or just forward this article to HR with the subject line: We Need to Talk (and Chill).

  • #BrainFogAndBugFixes

  • #HotFlashesColdCode

  • #HormonalButHeroic

  • #SweatyButSmart

  • #DesigningWhileMelting

  • #CodingInChaos

  • #StillBrilliantStillBurning

  • #DebuggingWithEstrogen

  • #BreakTheTaboo

  • #TalkAboutMenopause

  • #SupportMidlifeWomen

  • #MenopauseFriendlyWorkplace

  • #TechNeedsToChange

  • #RetainWomenInTech

  • #FeministFutureOfTech

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