Is asking a woman if she’s menopausal workplace harassment? It depends — and that’s the point.

Recent headlines suggest a Tribunal has ruled that it is “not harassment” to ask a woman if she is menopausal. That framing is catchy, but legally misleading.

Employment Tribunals do not decide harassment claims by slogan. They decide them by applying statute to facts.

The legal test

Under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010 (the Equality Act), harassment occurs where a person engages in unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic (such as sex and/or age) and the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

In menopause-related cases, claims are typically framed as harassment related to sex, age, or both.

Two key points often get lost:

1. The conduct must be unwanted.
2. It must either have the purpose or the effect of violating dignity or creating the prohibited environment — and that effect must be reasonable in all the circumstances.

The final phrase “reasonable in all the circumstances” is where context becomes everything.

In Ms L Waller v Swann Engineering Group Ltd (ET/6017991/2024), the Tribunal accepted that a manager made menopause-related comments, including references to “going through the change.”

However, taking the full factual matrix into account, the Tribunal concluded that it was not reasonable to treat the comments as meeting the statutory threshold for harassment under section 26.

Importantly, the Tribunal did not say that comments regarding menopause are acceptable. It did not create a blanket rule, but instead assessed the context, tone, relationship, and overall environment.

Notably, the claimant succeeded on other causes of action, and not exclusively under the harassment provisions.

In contrast, there is the judgment of Ms L Best v Embark on Raw Ltd (ET/3202006/2020) where the Tribunal upheld harassment related to sex and age. Menopause was raised in a way the Tribunal described as tactless and intrusive, and crucially the conduct continued after it was clear it was unwelcome.

The Tribunal found that the behaviour had the effect of violating dignity and creating a humiliating environment.

It’s also worth noting that menopause comments did not occur in isolation. The Tribunal examined a broader pattern of behaviour.

Why menopause comments toe the line

The dividing line is intensely fact-sensitive. Tribunals will consider:

• One-off vs repeated conduct
• Supportive enquiry vs intrusive or derogatory remark
• Genuinely welcomed conversation vs persistence after boundaries are clear
• Private discussion vs public embarrassment
• Power dynamics between manager and employee

A single, sensitively handled wellbeing conversation may be lawful. Repeated, flippant or boundary-crossing comments, particularly from someone in authority, may well be harassment.

The same words can cross the legal threshold in one setting and fall short in another, which reflects that workplace interactions are human and highly contextual.

Application in Guernsey

Harassment is prohibited under the Prevention of Discrimination (Guernsey) Ordinance, 2022, which uses a definition similar to section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. In simple terms, harassment occurs where unwanted conduct linked to a protected ground (such as sex) affects someone’s dignity at work or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.

One important difference is that age is not yet a protected ground in Guernsey (though this is expected to change in 2027). For now, menopause-related claims are most likely to be brought as sex-based harassment or discrimination claims. That does not make them weaker, but it does shape how they are argued.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the issue is not whether the word “menopause” was used. It is whether, in all the circumstances, the conduct was unwanted and reasonably had the effect of undermining dignity at work. Employers who prioritise respectful, informed conversations are far less likely to find themselves testing that boundary before a Tribunal.