Menopause and Street‐Level Work: The Lived Experience of Senior Female Pharmacists in Public Hospitals

ABSTRACT Drawing on Boundary Theory, this study investigates how female street‐level pharmacists working in Egyptian public hospitals cope with the symptoms of menopause in their daily professional roles and examines why menopause does not compel these pharmacists to exit their positions within the public healthcare sector, despite the challenges they face. To address these questions, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 24 female street‐level pharmacists employed in four public hospitals in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The data were analyzed using the Gioia method. Upon analysis, the author identifies that the addressed female street‐level bureaucrats adopt three main strategies to cope with the menopausal period: clinical role avoidance (manifested through professional detachment and a focus on non‐clinical tasks), eroding work commitment (expressed through reluctance to participate in training and a growing occupational indifference), and harnessing contentment and agency (through networking as a coping mechanism and increased use of accrued leave). Despite experiencing a range of physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges related to menopause, the addressed female pharmacists choose to continue with their career journey due to three key motivating factors: the desire to avoid early retirement, the comfort derived from maintaining a daily routine, and a strong sense of career persistence. This study fills a gap in the human resource management and public administration literature, where qualitative exploratory research on the influence of reproductive health issues faced by street‐level female workers, and the strategies they adopt to cope with them, is still rare, particularly in Middle Eastern and North African countries such as Egypt.