Will wearing a ‘MenoVest’ make men more empathetic to women's hot flushes?

At first glance, it looks like a tight-fitting cycling vest, made from a thin black material resembling Lycra.

But this is no cycling vest. The waistcoat, attached to a battery-powered controller by a long red wire, is in fact a MenoVest – a garment designed to simulate a menopausal hot flush and “develop empathy” around menopause in the workplace.

On Monday, Sir Iain Duncan Smith was one of several MPs who tried on the vest in order to experience the sudden, recurrent feeling of feverish heat that affects 70 per cent of women going through the menopause.

After applying the vest over his shirt and tie, the former Conservative party leader announced that he was “getting a hot flush”.

“It comes and goes… if [men] had this we’d be complaining a lot,” he said, his face appearing to turn slightly pink.

Created by design studio Thread Design, in partnership with corporate menopause support provider Over The Bloody Moon, and women’s pharmaceutical company Theramex, the vest uses heated pads to imitate the sudden advance of bodily heat so common among women.

Based on hot flush descriptions shared by menopausal and post-menopausal women, the tried-and-tested garment – of which there are three versions, two of which can be worn for 24 hours – simulates the sensation for three minutes.

It was commissioned by Over The Bloody Moon in order to start a conversation around how this can affect women at home and at work.

“I think this is a really good reminder for us as men that we need to be more tolerant, more sensitive,” Mr Duncan Smith told The Telegraph at the event in Westminster.

“Men often treat this as a joke – I don’t mean in a nasty way, but you refer to a woman as menopausal… we need to understand more about this, it’s really important to empathise,” he said. “We have to take it much more seriously.”

Side-by-side with Mr Duncan Smith, from across the political spectrum but wearing an identical MenoVest, was shadow health secretary Wes Streeting.

“It’s just deeply unpleasant, it’s a sort of enveloping heat… it’s one thing standing here, but imagine being at work,” he said of the hot flush simulation.

“If women had been running the show for longer, I very much doubt that women’s health would be where it is, and men have a responsibility to fix these problems too,” he said.

He said the Government's delay to dropping the cost of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was “completely unacceptable – this is a tax on women, this is a tax on the menopause.

“This is an issue that affects every woman in the country, and it affects their families too – that’s why we’ve got to give it the priority it deserves,” he said.

SNP MP Allan Dorans described it as “like a warm increasing heat going through your body to the extent where you want to get a drink of water… quite uncomfortable.”

He added that women “tend to suffer in silence,” and said the simulated hot flush had made him “more aware of what women are suffering from… there’s a huge lack of understanding amongst men about the menopause.”

Earlier this month, the House of Commons signed a pledge to become an exemplary employer for those experiencing menopause, with Sir Lindsay Hoyle vowing to “break the taboo”.

Chair of the Menopause Taskforce Carolyn Harris MP, who has been at the forefront of a movement calling for better support for menopausal women, said that she hopes the MenoVest will add to this conversation by helping men understand the impact of the menopause.

Ms Harris, who hosted the event in Portcullis House, told The Telegraph: “This really seemed like an opportunity to allow my colleagues to really understand what it feels like to go through a hot flush, and I’m delighted by how many have turned up.”

She said her own hot flushes have been “horrendous”. “You can’t imagine how painful it is… [it makes me] want to vomit".

The Labour MP led a successful campaign last year that saw the cost of HRT cut by up to £200 a year after the Government backed down over the calls for prescription charges to be scrapped.

Lesley Salem, founder of Over The Bloody Moon, said that she hopes the MenoVest – five of which have now been developed primarily for use in its corporate workshops – will “develop empathy and cultivate conversation” about the menopause.

“We need to stop feeling embarrassed about it,” she said, adding that hot flushes are just one of up to 48 menopause symptoms.

For the male MPs who experienced their first hot flush on Monday the vest had its desired result.