2.1 million* American women will enter menopause this year.
The (M) Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause film explores the hidden impact of menopause on women’s lives. Menopause has ramifications beyond just an individual woman’s well-being. The far-ranging results of women enduring untreated menopause include billions of dollars in lost wages, upended careers, family disruptions, and emotional chaos.
With evidence-based information, the film empowers women to make informed health decisions and aims to remove the stigma surrounding menopause and aging.
This feature-length documentary film centers on the lived experiences of women across the U.S. Cameras follow women into their doctors’ offices, at work, and in their homes to expose the challenges they face — including racial biases, gender-ignorant care, inequitable structures and systems, and barriers due to the lack of basic midlife healthcare research. The women featured here open up about their experiences and share their stories of enduring debilitating symptoms while being ignored, ridiculed and/or shamed — and left untreated.
Now there’s a movement to fix the broken system, change the culture and transform our future. “The (M) Factor” turns the spotlight on the progress being made. With input from emboldened physicians, healthcare advocates and leaders in the menopause movement, the film focuses on what is being done to address this public health crisis and offers solutions that can be replicated in medical communities and workplaces across the country. More on The (M) Factor website.
About Dr. Sophocles
Dr. Maria Sophocles has been at the forefront of women’s healthcare for nearly 30 years as a clinician, advocate for reproductive rights, speaker, author and public figure. She is a nationally recognized thought leader and practitioner in menopause and female sexual function, a board -certified Ob/Gyn and certified Menopause Practitioner.
In 2007, she founded Women’s Healthcare of Princeton (WHP), a groundbreaking gynecology practice that draws patients from all over the U.S. She worked in the NJ Senate to secure passage of a bill (S-275) to ensure continued access of NJ women to contraception. She is the Chief Medical Officer of a tech startup,EMBR Labs, and the Medical Director of a progressive longevity practice, Curia Health. Her 2023 viral TedTalk on sex in midlife introduced the term “The Bedroom Gap” which was then recognized by Oprah Winfrey. In her forthcoming book of the same name she addresses the state of sex today for women in midlife.
