We spend most of our lives at work.

Hours. Days. Years.

And yet, when it comes to physical health, particularly women's physical health, so much of it is still managed quietly around the edges of the working day.

Silently. Privately. Carefully.

As though it exists somewhere outside of work. But that makes no sense. Because how we feel physically affects everything. Our focus. Our confidence. Our energy. Our comfort. Our ability to perform.

And yet so many women still feel they have to navigate these things alone.

Fertility treatment. Hormonal health. Periods. Menopause. Breast discomfort. Exhaustion. Trying to fit appointments around meetings. Trying not to inconvenience anyone. Trying not to draw attention to what's really going on.

I remember this clearly myself.

At one point I was going through fertility treatment. I had to be in certain places at certain times, and the stress of managing that around work was immense.

And I didn't tell people.  Not because I didn't want to. But because I was scared. Scared it would change how I was seen. Scared it would affect opportunities. Scared that someone, somewhere, would quietly think: "She'll probably want children soon."

So instead, like so many women, I carried it quietly. And when I look back now, I realise how wrong that feels.

Because we cannot separate human beings from their bodies. And yet workplaces have long been designed as though we should - as though physical wellbeing sits somewhere outside of performance.It doesn't.

Women come to work in bodies. Bodies that experience discomfort, hormonal shifts, pain, fatigue, and stress. Bodies that change through different stages of life. And through the work we're doing at Peachaus, I've started to understand just how much discomfort women have simply normalised - and how uncomfortable society still is talking about it.

I still hear comments like: "Bra fitting isn't really for work." Or: "We don't talk about boobs at work."And I always find myself thinking: why not?

Breasts are not separate from women's health. And women's health is not separate from work. If someone is physically uncomfortable every single day, that affects how they feel, how they move, how they show up, how confident they are. These aren't trivial things. They're the foundation of how a person functions.

And yet these conversations still sit under a layer of awkwardness and taboo.

We've got better at talking about mental health at work - and that matters enormously. Menopause conversation has opened up too, which is real progress. Policies are being written. Adjustments are being made. But even that feels like we're still only at the edges of something much bigger.

Because menopause affects some women, for some years. What about the decades before that? Periods. Hormonal shifts. Fertility. Breast health. Discomfort that women carry quietly from their very first day in the workplace.

Menopause cracked the door open. But women's physical health across an entire working life? Still largely unspoken. Still managed quietly, around the edges.

That needs to change.

Because if workplaces genuinely care about wellbeing, why would physical health be excluded from the conversation? The future workplace has to be more holistic than this. Not just a place where work gets done, but a place that genuinely supports people, their health, their bodies, their lives.

A place where flexibility is normal. Where trust exists. Where people don't feel they have to hide what they're going through.

Because when people feel supported, they perform better. When people feel physically well, they contribute more. And when women don't have to quietly carry everything alone, something changes - not just for them, but for the organisations they're part of.

This isn't a wellbeing add-on. It's a business conversation.

Women come to work in bodies. Always have.

The question is whether the workplace is finally ready to acknowledge that.

The systems we live inside shape who we become. Which means if we want a different future, we have to build different systems.

Gilly
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