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Melinda French Gates recently revealed that it took three doctors before she received the right diagnosis and treatment for perimenopause.
During an appearance on “Healthful,” CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell’s new women’s health podcast, French Gates recalled that she entered perimenopause in her early 40s, shortly after welcoming her youngest child.
“I kind of couldn’t believe it because I had just finished having my last child in my late thirties,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
Although French Gates said she “knew what to watch for,” she admitted that finding answers proved far more difficult than she expected.
“It was kind of unbelievable to me that, even in this, you know, unbelievably privileged situation I’m in, where I feel like I can get some of the best health care, it took me three doctors to really diagnose what I was going through and to get the right treatments for where I was,” she explained.
She stressed that she does not blame the physicians she consulted because “only a third, one third, of OB-GYNs in this country are trained in menopause.”
She also agreed when O’Donnell suggested that menopause and perimenopause could be a barrier for women who want to reach senior leadership positions.
“It could be one of the things holding women back,” French Gates said. “We know that one in ten women step back from the workforce during their years of perimenopause or menopause because of severe symptoms that they’re experiencing.”
To support the cause, she also announced a $215 million commitment to women’s health initiatives on Instagram, with funding set aside for menopause and perimenopause care.
Her experience echoes the concerns raised by Elizabeth Comen, a b***** oncologist, who argued that centuries of gender bias continue to shape women’s healthcare (via Harvard Medicine).
The symptoms suffered by female patients are often minimized and misunderstood. Comen gave an example of how women’s pain is dismissed: “You do a skin biopsy in a dermatologist’s office and they numb you up before. Yet many women get IUDs placed or have an endometrial biopsy without proper pain management. There’s a long-standing idea that because we endure childbirth we’re meant to endure pain.”
Comen also argued that women “are not just ‘our b**** and our tubes'” and that diseases often present differently in women than in men.
French Gates hopes such conversations lead to lasting change. In her The New York Times guest essay, she called for a “menopause revolution,” warning that the effects extend well beyond hot flashes and joint pain.
“It’s time to make women’s health a priority—because when women are healthier, everyone benefits,” she wrote. “That’s the future we should be building.”
