3-Day Menstrual Leave: The Systemic Disregard of Women’s Health in Politics
Menstrual leave is a workplace policy in which employees who experience severe pain or other related symptoms as a result of their period are entitled to take paid or unpaid time off work, on top of state-mandated sick leave. Spain became the first European country to adopt this policy and offer 3-5 days of state-funded paid menstrual leave in 2023, requiring a doctor’s note, brought in under Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing government, following nations such as Japan and South Korea, and the UK recently debated the issue in Parliament, showing that menstrual leave is a growing phenomenon worldwide.
There are many reasons why a government may decide to adopt a statutory menstrual leave policy, considering both economic factors and also individual comfort. A main advantage of the introduction of menstrual leave is the improved health and wellbeing of women as a result of granting them appropriate time to rest and recover during their period, a physically and psychologically exhausting time of the month for them, by eliminating the stress of having to work through intense pain or fatigue without depleting their dedicated sick or vacation days or facing professional consequences. This means that women who suffer from conditions such as endometriosis, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), adenomyosis or any other reproductive conditions would be accommodated for and therefore allow them to rest when symptoms peak and be happier and more productive upon return. Additionally, menstrual leave is positive in an economic sense because menstruation is inherently a workplace issue - a 2021 survey conducted in Melbourne showed that 83% of women felt that their overall productivity was negatively affected by heavy periods or associated symptoms and the Netherlands reported an average of 9 days of productivity lost per person as a result of presenteeism and working through the pain - demonstrating that the presence of a menstrual leave scheme will result in lowered rates of long term absences and higher rates of employee satisfaction and loyalty as staff will be allowed to manage their symptoms independently and remotely. Furthermore, one year after its introduction in Spain, it had reported relatively low usage rates, showing that largely, people do not want to exploit the system.
Other benefits include the promotion of gender equity in the workplace, ensuring that employees are not penalised for or forced into silent discomfort as a result of their biological realities - and this includes not only cisgendered women but also all menstruating people, for example trans men and non-binary individuals, allowing for more opportunities for inclusivity across all gender identities.
On the other hand, although it does provide those who need it with many advantages, menstrual leave is not without its drawbacks. The enforcement of this policy is a grey area, and could potentially lead to discrimination in the workforce because many workplace environments are already incredibly hostile towards maternity leave and so the introduction of another concession for women may be perceived unfairly by certain employers, leaving many women at a disadvantage when it comes to applying for jobs, especially small businesses as extra leave may make it harder for employers to maintain enough staff, therefore increasing labour costs. On an individual level, women may feel that using their statutory menstrual leave may affect how their employees, managers or colleagues view them or they might even feel that they are inadvertently reinforcing the idea that menstruating women are less capable or reliable. As a result, many women will likely end up not using their menstrual leave, even if they do suffer from menstrual pain, on account of this and there is limited evidence that menstrual leave is proportionally taken by those who need it the most. Additionally, this policy brings about many administrative concerns because employers will need to make their own parameters for requesting and managing menstrual leave, therefore creating more work for firms as a result of having to define eligibility and thus potentially increasing a sense of disillusionment among workers, but also because the nature of the policy causes certain privacy concerns as women will need to disclose that they taking leave because of their period, which could be uncomfortable for some people.
Many critics of menstrual leave say that alternative policies may be simpler as general sick leave or flexible working arrangements could provide support without creating a separate category of leave.
At first glance, it would seem as though this is a positive step towards equity and a benevolent gesture on behalf of participating employers, however the reality is that “period pain”, a term that many of us have become accustomed to, is not a diagnosis in itself, but rather a symptom of a much larger issue that has been ignored in the fields of both Medicine and in Politics for many decades: to put it simply, healthy women should not be experiencing debilitating pain during their menstrual cycle that leaves them unable to work for numerous days, and it is this matter that requires government attention, as opposed to its consequences.
In reality, the real issue lies in the fact that many women of reproductive age suffer from acute symptoms such as stomach cramps, lower back pain, headaches, fatigue and nausea. More allocated funding to reproductive disease could lead to improved research, diagnosis and treatment of conditions that cause severe menstrual symptoms, allowing those affected to receive better support and reducing the need for separate menstrual leave. This could also help address the underlying health issues rather than simply providing time away from work or education.
Policies such as this just demonstrate the institutional misunderstanding of menstrual health as, although it does attempt to alleviate some stress from those who seriously suffer from period pain, it crucially does not attempt to properly address the root cause - a systemic lack of research and funding into reproductive conditions and their treatments. That is not to say that all women who experience painful cramps have a serious underlying illness, however this ongoing issue has been masked for decades by an overall “just go on birth control” attitude perpetuated by many medical professionals, which has meant that those women who do suffer from conditions such as endometriosis are often diagnosed later on in life or even not at all and as such, the birth control pill, which was once the key to the woman’s liberation, has now become yet another barrier to adequate female healthcare.
This sparks a much larger conversation about discrimination in Medicine, a field that would typically be considered immune from this, but is actually plagued by it the most. It can be seen in the historic exclusion of black people from medical research and clinical trials, the fact that nearly all medical equipment is made and manufactured to suit the male anatomy according to extremely outdated measurements and the underrepresentation of darker skin tones in medical textbooks, making it harder to diagnose skin conditions in darker complexions. This demonstrates how deeply embedded bias can become within medical systems, ultimately affecting the quality of care and treatment available to different groups of people.
To conclude, although women’s suffrage is widely considered to be over, the challenges facing women still continue to this day and the debate surrounding the 3-day menstrual leave extends far beyond a question of women being able to have more time off work but instead exposes a deeper, much more sinister truth: that women’s health is a chronically misunderstood concept within policy making which will require substantial investment and effort in order to address In a society that prides itself on progress and equality, the continued politicisation of menstruation highlights how easily women’s lived experiences can be overlooked when policies are shaped without adequate consideration of their needs. From the underrepresentation of women in medical research to the stigma surrounding menstrual health, these inequalities reflect a broader failure to treat women’s health as a fundamental priority rather than an inconvenient exception. Progress requires more than acknowledging that these inequalities exist - it demands evidence-based policies, meaningful representation and a willingness to challenge the social and political structures that perpetuate them. Only then can we move towards a society in which women are no longer expected to compromise their health to accommodate systems that were never designed with them in mind.
By Shaza Ahmed
