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A new low in mansplaining – menopause as a metaphor for a failing economy

Ben Broadbent, the Bank of England deputy governor
Ben Broadbent clarified his use of ‘menopausal’ to mean ‘past your productive peak’. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

No offence to my employers, but the continued absence of a menopause cry space, as recently pioneered by Notts police, has not gone unnoticed.

Nor – now that a Bank of England official reminds middle-aged women of our extraordinary similarity to once-productive economies, doomed to pitiable decline – have I witnessed any of the workplace menopause openness advocated by the chief medical officer, Sally Davies, such as the taboo-defying “M” for menopause badges. Or “C” for climacteric, as the menopause is known to clinicians, Germaine Greer and, we now discover, the deputy governor of the Bank of England.

In an interview that will long be a topic in my bespoke, home cry space, Ben Broadbent told the Daily Telegraph that the British economy is “menopausal”. That means, he elaborated, “you’re past your productive peak, you’re no longer potent”.

City analysts fluent in gynaecology/economy parallels would have immediately spotted, looking on the bright side, that Dr Broadbent neither ruled out HRT nor resorted to similes featuring fibroids, stress incontinence or vaginal mesh.

But to those unable to interpret Mr Broadbent’s choice of words as anything other than a rare combination of idiocy and unabashed misogyny, he could only, after protests, apologise. Even at the BBC, renowned for its efficiency in purging middle-aged women, most men can be relied on to pretend ignorance of the system. At the Bank of England, colleagues have been tasked, recently, with attributing its massive 25% gender pay gap to the mysterious absence of senior women. Anyway, perhaps Broadbent’s apology will entice more of these failing organisms on board. “I was explaining,” he said, “the meaning of the word climacteric.”

Thoughtful of you, Ben. Though maybe, next time, look it up? So as not to conflate the word’s medical definition with climacteric’s primary meaning, in literature unrelated to biology, as a critical moment or period? Rather than explain further, why don’t we substitute “menopause” for “climacteric” in academic titles where Mr Broadbent believes a biological comparator to be involved? For instance: “The menopause of the 1890s: a study in the expanding economy.” And: “Was 19th-century British growth steam-powered?: The menopause revisited.” Similarly: “‘The menopause event in our history’: aspects of Burke’s reception in France.”

The Bank of England has recently attributed its massive 25% gender pay gap to the absence of senior women

If, for reasons at which we can only guess, the menopause has become Broadbent’s go-to stagnation metaphor, it is only fair to point out that distaste for women near their own age is shared by many of his middle-aged peers. Look, for instance, at the writing of Rod Liddle or Tony Blair (“the good matrons of the Women’s Institute”); at the 20-year age difference preferred by men who can afford it, when they trade in a climacteric-damaged partner.

Naturally, so soon after Toby Young’s surrender of an academic appointment (following exposure of his tweets about women’s “knockers”), and amid the general resentment resulting from #MeToo, Broadbent’s humiliation immediately earned him a place, alongside St Toby of the Tits, in the pantheon of political correctness martyrs. “Did bank boss HAVE to apologise?”, the Mail demanded, of the “PC brigade”. “He was simply using a metaphor.”

The Telegraph, having used that innocent metaphor for its headline, now protested the reaction with all the indignation of a tweeting Trump, when he blames the recoil from his own obscenities on “politically correct fools”. Broadbent, the Telegraph said, had been unfairly “hounded” by a “self-appointed Inquisition ready to jump on well-meaning if infelicitous comments”.

Toby Young
Toby Young, another political correctness martyr, had to surrender an academic appointment for tweeting about women’s ‘knockers’. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex/Shutterstock

This is obviously a very busy period for the Inquisition, but as a self-appointed member, an answer to the Mail’s question – did he have to apologise? – given it indicates such deep confusion, might save valuable man-flaying time. Yes, Broadbent did. His curious definition of climacteric, in an economics context, and following that, of the menopause, did not merely advertise his belief in female decline, it also, given his cluelessness as to how the generalisation would be heard, demonstrated why the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee still resembles, with one exception, sex arrangements on Mount Athos. Although credit where it’s due: with Broadbent’s observations being endorsed as “well-meaning”, the scale of Sally Davies’s task, in destigmatising the menopause, becomes easier to appreciate.

Next: should a 76-year-old professor Ned Lebow be disgraced for replying, when someone asked “which floor” in a crowded US lift, “women’s lingerie”. It was, as he admits, a distinctly “lame”, Are You Being Served?, elevator pleasantry. He meant, even if it merited some eye-rolling, nothing by it. In fact, this may be the moment for phatic (inconsequential, non-referential) speech, a term that now litters academic papers, to prove its worth. Phatic, one-off asides do not automatically, even when unwelcome, raise questions, as did Broadbent’s and Young’s deliberate observations, about the implications for women colleagues.

Are they being recognised as something other than, say, knocker-owners? Or a #grandmaI’dliketoshag (Young on Helen Mirren)? Are they more than a “sexy little slag” (Labour’s Jared O’Mara); “deliberately barren” (Senator Bill Heffernan of Julia Gillard); a “crazy harpy sister” (Jordan Peterson); a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” (Boris Johnson, of Hillary Clinton); “very spindly legs and a brittle smile” (Alastair Campbell on Sue Lawley); or fat, calculating, ugly, crazy, a slob, “extremely unattractive” (Donald Trump, passim)?

Further illustrating the surgical effectiveness of the PC inquisition, the most garrulous misogynist of the above is shortly expected on his state visit. We know Trump was sexually interested in both Princess Diana and Kate Middleton. But what of Her Majesty? With luck, the president will find her in good shape, like Brigitte Trogneux, and not, like some nasty women, a pig, a dog. Either way, it could be a climacteric event.

• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist