Services for Development and Humanitarian Actors

Workplace Hormone Health: Practising What We Promote

research
resource mobilisation

Research

The Rationale

Our sector champions gender equality in programmes, advocates for menstrual health in communities, and funds dignity kits in emergencies — yet inside our own organisations, menstruation, menstrual conditions and menopause remain largely unspoken. Staff and volunteers manage symptoms silently through field deployments, long missions and high-pressure response work; careers quietly stall through perimenopause; and organisational policies rarely name any of it. There is a credibility gap between what we promote externally and what we practise internally — and closing it is both a duty-of-care issue and a gender equality issue. 

Cyclica works at this intersection with unusual depth on both sides: over 15 years of gender equality practice within humanitarian and development organisations, combined with certified expertise in women’s hormone health through the Institute for Menstrual Health. 

We meet organisations wherever they are, from first conversation to formal policy: 

  • Team awareness sessions — foundational hormone and menstrual health literacy for staff of all genders, opening a subject most teams have never discussed and normalising it in the process. 
  • Manager and HR training — equipping managers and HR to hold supportive conversations and make reasonable adjustments with confidence: what menstrual conditions and menopause actually involve, what helps, and where the legal and duty-of-care considerations sit. 
  • Policy advisory — supporting HR and leadership to develop menstrual and menopause-inclusive policies that reflect the realities of humanitarian work, grounded in organisational values and aligned with existing duty-of-care and gender commitments. 

Sessions are delivered online or in person, and are designed to be low-lift for busy teams.  

Organisations that walk the talk: workplaces where hormonal health is speakable, managers who know how to respond, policies that reflect real bodies and real working conditions — and an organisational culture whose internal practice strengthens, rather than undermines, its external gender equality mandate. 

Design and Resource Mobilisation

The Rationale

Assumptions are often made around what would make an activity, project or service more gender sensitive. For example, if we target more women than men then we will be advancing gender equality. Or, if we invite women to participate in a decision-making meeting, then our inclusion efforts are complete. However, the systemic barriers and challenges to women’s participation, or the root causes of inequality are often not integrated into the design, implementation or monitoring of projects. We are passionate about helping teams really think through how to create gender responsive and transformative programming.

Conversations in design workshops can often be driven by the types of activities that can be implemented rather than based on the larger strategic objectives we want to achieve. We support teams to design powerful and impactful projects, which are both integrated and logical, and have the potential to have transformational impact for both gender equality projects and for those that have different sectoral objectives.

  • Design of gender transformative and/or gender responsive projects and programs
  • Integration of social norm change and engaging men and boys programming
  • Facilitation of multi-stakeholder design workshops
  • Evidence and data-driven design
  • Development of logical frameworks
  • Coordination with different teams and departments
  • Development of narrative proposals
  • Progression of projects and programs on the gender continuum (from gender neutral to gender transformative)
  • Development and finalisation of logical, needs-based and evidence-driven, donor aligned proposal packages

Organisational Strengthening

The Rationale

To be truly effective in delivering high quality and impactful gender equality programming, internal organisational cultures need to uphold the values of equity, diversity and inclusion. In-country teams are often navigating their personal and professional lives within conservative and patriarchal norms and they are not exempt from the conditioning that goes with this. It is of vital importance that organisations model a culture that shifts power to the most marginalised and internally examines harmful and deep-rooted social norms of their staff that affects the  working environment of an organisation.

  • Facilitation of equity, diversity and inclusion workshops
  • Gender audits and assessments
  • Toolkit and manual development
  • Creating an equal and inclusive organisational culture
  • Prevention and mitigation of workplace harassment and violence