The Smoke Shelter Paradox and Why Companies Still Prioritize Cigarettes Over Women’s Health
- Brainz Magazine
- Jun 2
- 6 min read
Dr. Zrinka Fidermuc Maler is a recognised expert in corporate health, female leadership, and transformational change. She founded Mind & Body Empowerment Coaching, an integrative, science-backed method designed to enhance mental, physical, and emotional resilience. Her work focuses on helping women 40+, 50+, and teams thrive through hormonal transitions, stress resilience, and high-impact communication.
How cultural bias, outdated workplace health logic, and economic shortsightedness fail the women who keep businesses running.
A shelter for cigarettes, but not for hormones?
They call it progress when you build a smoke shelter, but ignore the reality of women navigating perimenopause behind closed office doors. This article starts with a paradox, ends with a call to action, and invites you to rethink what leadership and corporate health really mean.
If companies can build shelters so employees can inhale death sticks in peace, surely they can create space, literal, emotional, and structural, for half of their workforce navigating menopause. Right?
Wrong. In most workplaces, lighting a cigarette gets you infrastructure. Having a hot flash gets you silence. This isn’t satire. It’s how systemic absurdity looks in real-time.
The taboo that starts with us
Despite affecting a significant portion of the workforce, menopause is still a sensitive topic in many German workplaces.
Ask a group of highly educated, high-performing women in their 40s if they’re in perimenopause, and most will respond: “No, no, not me. I’m just stressed. I’m still regular. I’m fine.”
This is what internalized ageism sounds like.
We don’t talk about it because we were taught not to. Not in medical school, not in leadership development programs, not in wellness newsletters, and certainly not in corporate performance reviews.
But here's the truth: the revolution won’t start until we stop ghosting our own biology.
My father’s bypass and the cost of neglect
Let me tell you one thing: my father died from lifestyle. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Self-neglect. The long, slow burn of saying yes to everyone but himself.
At 54, the age I will be soon, he had a quadruple bypass and was told never to smoke again. He was diagnosed with nicotism, a term I’d never heard until then: complete systemic poisoning by nicotine.
He didn’t stop. And the system around him kept accommodating that choice, with silence, smoke zones, and social shrugs.
He later died of cancer.
Women don’t choose menopause. And yet, they’re the ones being quietly asked to carry it alone.
From hot flash to power pitch: A CEO's reality
A sovereign female CEO and a respected agency owner, during a critical client pitch, was suddenly flooded by a hot flash sweat on her silk blouse, surging heat making her head red like a tomato, brain static. She looked up, smiled, and said:
“Let’s take 10. Then we win this pitch.” She did. And they did.
This isn’t a breakdown, it’s a new form of power. The kind that leads with honesty, agility, and grace. But not everyone gets to do that. Not every environment allows it.
So we end up losing talent, experience, and credibility, not because of menopause, but because of the cultural incompetence around it.
Smoking gets support. Menopause gets ignored
Let’s look at the numbers.
Smokers cost companies over €5,000 more per year in healthcare and productivity losses.
They take 2-4 extra sick days annually, and have higher rates of absenteeism and early retirement.
Menopausal women often push through migraines, insomnia, anxiety, and brain fog without saying a word because there’s no space, no vocabulary, no protocol.
According to the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology (BIPS), individuals who refrain from smoking, drink in moderation, exercise regularly, and eat a healthy diet live up to 17 years longer than those who don’t.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Germany’s DAK health insurance confirm that smokers take on average 2-4 more sick days per year.
A 2013 BMJ study found that a full-time smoker costs an employer over $5,800 more annually in healthcare, lost productivity, and absenteeism.
Companies build smoking shelters. But where’s the menopause policy?
Workplace health management: The missed opportunity
In fact, even Germany’s national health insurance umbrella organization, the GKV-Spitzenverband, managed to mention menopause only once in its entire 2023 prevention guideline. Tucked inside a parenthesis on page 57, menopause was briefly noted in connection with osteoporosis, and then ignored entirely.
Meanwhile, the same document refers to smoking, smokers, and the diseases associated with tobacco use more than 30 times. That's not oversight, it’s systemic neglect by design.
And one might cynically add: what’s good for long-term revenue in hospitals and among specialists isn’t necessarily prevention, it’s a steady stream of treatable conditions. Menopause, when left unaddressed, becomes profitable too, but only after the burnout, bone loss, or heart surgeries.
Zooming in on current workplace practices, it becomes clear that institutional support is lagging.
BAD GmbH, a leading provider of occupational health services in Germany, has acknowledged the importance of gender-specific perspectives in workplace safety and health. They highlight inclusive equipment and family-friendly models, but still lack programs addressing menopause directly.
Other initiatives, like Female Health Management, are beginning to fill the gap. Their programs focus on hormonal health for women over 40, offering workshops and online education, but these remain the exception, not the rule.
Meanwhile, the silence persists. In German corporate culture, menopause remains taboo. Studies confirm: many women feel unsupported, under-informed, and underrepresented, leading to burnout, drop-out, or simply suffering in silence.
The sixth Kondratiev wave and the feminine advantage
Economist Nikolai Kondratiev proposed that society evolves in 40-60-year cycles. Each wave is driven by innovation from steam engines to electricity to digital tech.
The sixth wave is believed to be now: Health. Sustainability. Emotional intelligence. Human-centric systems.
But here’s the twist: AI was supposed to define this wave. Instead, it’s pushing us to the brink. While AI evolves at exponential speed, our mind and body systems don’t. And in the rush to adapt, we risk burning out the very biology that carries our leadership forward.
Tony Robbins recently noted that change cycles, once measured in decades, are now collapsing into five-year sprints, a shift that echoes the very logic of Kondratiev's long waves, now accelerating in pace and pressure. You either adapt fast or disappear.
But how do you adapt when your brain feels foggy, your sleep is fractured, and your emotional thermostat is all over the place?
Women know cycles. AI doesn’t
Mother Nature and women have always lived with cycles monthly, seasonally, and hormonally. We shift, adapt, bleed, flow, retreat, rise again. Our bodies are ecosystems.
Now the economy is learning to cycle too. The problem is: companies still reward linear performance and 24/7 output, ignoring the actual rhythm of humans.
The AI revolution will not be led by the most automated minds, but by those who can stay regulated in chaos.
That’s a skill women in perimenopause practice daily.
OECD says: The future needs us
The OECD's top skills for the future are:
Resilience
Emotional intelligence
Analytical thinking
Creativity
Technological literacy
Tell me again who has been cultivating emotional resilience, mental creativity, and intuitive leadership while dealing with fluctuating estrogen? Right.
Business logic 101: Scale without foundation = crash
Any startup expert will tell you: if you scale too fast without aligned systems, people, and processes, you fail.
It’s called bad unit economics.
Menopause is the same. If you ignore the internal reorganization while trying to go full throttle, you break.
What future-ready leadership looks like
The companies that thrive in this sixth wave won’t be the fastest or the flashiest.
They’ll be the ones who:
Create policies for hormonal transitions
Normalize conversations around midlife shifts
See female leaders in their 40s and 50s as wisdom carriers, not liabilities
Balance performance with regulation, precision with grace.
Final word
My father died of self-destruction. I plan to use my life to rewrite the narrative with clarity, compassion, and zero shame.
The future isn’t a straight line. It’s a cycle. And those who understand cycles will lead it.
In Resilience. In Elegance. In Full Hormonal Rebellion.
P.S. If this article struck a chord, whether you're navigating hormonal shifts, leading a team through transformation, or simply craving more emotional intelligence in leadership, there’s more.
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Read more from Dr. Zrinka K. Fidermuc Maler
Dr. Zrinka K. Fidermuc Maler, Business & Health Empowerment Strategist, Author
Dr. Zrinka is a recognised expert in corporate health, female leadership, and mind-body performance, focused on mental, physical, and emotional resilience. She spent over a decade coaching employees in the German railway sector and held a scientific fellowship at the German Aerospace Center, where her research focused on gender dynamics, service innovation, and knowledge transfer. She holds a Master’s degree in education, literature, a PhD in social sciences, multiple coaching certifications, and advanced yoga teacher training rooted in the philosophy and psychology of the eight-limbed path of Ashtanga yoga. Her mission: Empowering Lifelong Transformation.
