A media company in Mumbai is giving women a day off during their periods

Or allow flexible scheduling around periods.

But doing that doesn't get the same PR credit for fighting sexism, and it costs a whole lot more money, so "what's the point?"

Men don't get a day of pain and cramps each month so I don't see why we should get the day off. Periods aren't fun, and I don't think men deserve a day at the golf course in exchange.

> based on their gender

Based on their sex.

http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html

> Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.

> Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.

May as well link some script from the Life of Brian to demonstrate that you can identify (gender) as a woman if you are a male but where's the foetus going to gestate (sex).

http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Life_of_Brian/8.htm

13 would be closer to the average ;)

But you're right. A number of people I've spoken to about parental leave (not all of whom have been men) are skeptical of paternity leave because they largely see maternity leave as an opportunity to recover from the physical and medical hardships of child birth, with emotional bonding merely an ancillary benefit. Even if that's true, creating gender independent norms avoids giving ammunition to the quietly sexist eye-rollers who use maternity leave to devalue female coworkers. While it would be better to just make a quantum leap to the ideal world where no one holds those opinions in the first place, existing cultural norms and beliefs naturally constrain policy on a pragmatic level and we have to work within those constraints as best we can.

It's funny to see these fumbling efforts toward those goals by companies from a different culture than my own, though. I can't imagine even the most politically naive and insensitive American manager suggesting this idea, outside of a Michael Scott from the Office type parody. Is it because we tackled basic issues with women in the workplace earlier than India because we modernized faster? Like is this the sort of idea bumbling Dilbert-esque middle managers in corporate America proposed during the mid-70s? Or is there some underlying difference in cultural taboos about discussing periods? I have to confess that India is one country where I am not very well informed about the culture on the ground as I haven't spent any time there.

Throwaway because no one wants to hear about periods. I am a woman and one time my body decided to have an extremely heavy and painful flow for about a week straight. I had been sick with a cold immediately before that, so I had already let my employer know that I was not feeling well and would be taking some days off, and I did not feel the need to tell my employer every little detail about what was going on. Every morning I would text something along the lines of, "I'm still not feeling well."

After about the third day of being out my boss texted me with a suggestion that I go see a doctor. When I finally got back to the office he wanted to see a doctor's note. I did not go to the doctor, because more extreme bleeding is something that is expected after having an IUD inserted.

I was at home in extreme pain, changing out adult diapers about 3 times a day that were completely soaked with blood. I think this 100% is a good enough reason to not come into work, and it's sort of bull that my boss was asking about my personal business when we are already a company that combines sick days with vacation days as PTO.

I actually did fill my boss in on all the gory details since he wouldn't let up on the doctor's note, but this is absolutely something that I should NEVER have to disclose to someone to be able to keep my job.

I don't really have a good solution here. I want the 12 extra holiday days for everyone solution to work, but there will always be people abusing their limited amount of power to unnecessarily investigate what we are using our PTO for.

I totally get your point, and from a capitalist perspective the solution of the media company in the article dis-incentivises hiring women as a dollar per hour of work metric instantly makes hiring a woman less cost effective.

I've seen comments like men don't have the day of pain, so don't "need the holiday" but these people obviously don't own a business or pay other peoples wages. When you are a small business you ensure that you hire people based on the maximum return on investment based on skillset and deliverables. If you have 2 identically skilled and equally hard working employees but one works 12 days less per year and gets the same money, you would hire the one who delivers 12 extra days. If you ignore the sex of the applicants and it was down to a purely financial decision (as it always should be in business, especially publicly traded businesses) then you would be neglecting your responsibilities if you hire someone who costs more and delivers less.

The solution may be simply allow flexi-time. Each member of staff must fulfil X number of hours per week, month, year or whatever slice you decide, and when its performed is up to them. This wouldn't work with List-X or restricted sites, where work must be performed on site, but for something like a media company I'm sure you could work from many suitable locations.

Oh, sorry to double reply, but I just thought of something devious. What if any of the following apply to the female employee:

Is on birth control to supress having a period.

Has an IUD and is one of the 1 in 5 for whom this stops Having periods for a year.

Has had a hysterectomy.

Has gone through menopause.

Has another condition which causes them to not have periods.

do they have their 12 days ripped from them unceremoniously?

It seems like there are a lot of edge cases here which may provide additional areas to cry "sexism" because for the cases listed above they wont require the 12 extra days, yet without having intimate medical knowledge of your staff, you cannot differentite between one type of non-period having staff member and another (in the "other" case a male).

in any case I'm glad they've done it as a case study on what happens next.

Reminds me of a company in a country I won't name that celebrated International Women's Day by giving each female employee a bouquet of flowers.

There may have been good intentions ...

Are long weekends really such a bad thing?

hey, personally I do feel really bad in the first day and when I need to go to work I always think "I wish I could stay at home and work from there", so it really impacts my performance and from one side it is indeed a great idea, but it is sexism towards men - they also feel bad from time to time, so why not unify this practice for all and just give more paid day-offs / sick leaves, as was already mentioned in the comment above. Also, I am not very comfortable letting everyone in the company know when the period starts and gossip about that (yes, this is also a topic for gossip).

Not sure how to feel about this; but I also don't consider myself a women who suffers heavily under period symptoms.

If I feel bad enough that I can't do my work properly, I would simply leave, periods or not. (Normal paid sick leave - this is relatively easy in my country.) It has only happened once since I started working full time five years ago, that I was in so much pain from periods that I had to leave work. (And that was after taking two painkillers and even those didn't help.)

I certainly think a policy like this would feed into wage gap issues - it would definitely be unfair to pay the same amount of money to two employees, when one of them potentially works 12 days more in a year.

It sounds plausible that it would work better in a female dominated company -- I would rather suck up the pain than deal with stupid remarks of my male colleagues because they know I'm on my periods...

In general, I think women grow up with having to deal with their periods and the symptoms since childhood/teenage years, so it's just a normal part of life for us. Sure, some women have it way worse that others, but I'd say 90% can cope with it without problems and don't need extra holidays.

Though I do like the idea of giving those women in bad pain the opportunity to work from home! It doesn't necessarily help with the symptoms, but at least one can sit somewhere comfortable in PJs with a warm water bottle, which makes it a lot more bearable IMO.

As a woman whose period symptoms are not currently severe, but were for several years...

I used to have one morning per month when I could barely move from the pain and the naproxen I took to make it bearable would prevent me from concentrating on anything more complicated than children's cartoons. But I stumbled into work and faked productivity anyway because I only got 10 days of PTO - vacation and sick days combined - every year. If I'd taken time off to deal with menstrual pain, I would never have had a vacation at all.

And I'm a lucky one. My menstrual symptoms were only moderately severe, and they usually eased by mid-afternoon. Given flexibility, I would probably have worked remotely, taken a couple hours off in the morning (only answering urgent communications), and worked a couple hours later in the evening to make up for it (instead of bolting out of the office at 5pm sharp because being there sucks even harder when you're bleeding like a stuck pig and your intestines are revolting against your OTC meds and you generally feel like you've been hit by a bus).

Probably 25-30% of women (even without additional medical conditions like PCOS) have more severe symptoms than I did. I do think it's valuable to take menstrual problems into account and I would appreciate a workplace that is sympathetic to women who suffer severe menstrual symptoms.

But I hate that this particular proposal creates gender differences in the workplace. Yes, it feeds into the wage gap and into reluctance to hire women. It also creates weird medical privacy issues as several other posters have pointed out.

The right solution probably involves some combination of schedule flexibility; remote work; more sick days for everyone, not just women who happen to menstruate; and separating sick days from vacation days.

I think that's mostly a myth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_synchrony

Your suggestion is different rules for different genders?

I'm not saying this isn't a reason to try your proposal, but you may not be aware that for a significant minority of women, period symptoms can be severe enough to make work difficult or impossible, even from home.

Severe headaches. Cramps so severe you can't think or sit upright unless on enough painkillers to make your brain nothing but fuzz. (Even OTC painkillers like naproxen that are commonly taken for cramps can affect concentration, not to mention having extremely unpleasant effects on digestion.)

Yes, when you're changing tampons every hour, it's less anxiety-inducing to be in the comfort of your own home. But most of the reasons women tend to take sick days during menstruation aren't solved by working remotely.

Maternity leave in theory has the same disadvantage, as generally women take this more than paternity leave (though I think that's changing) - it can be combatted by public denigration of companies that consider men to be preferable hires on the basis of lower risk of disruption and lower costs.

Thus I don't think it'd be a problem.

that's the assumption that a desk job is 8 hours straight productivity.

but manual labour might hedge towards male employment, that's true.

Sick leave? As far as I know that's exactly what it's for. It also has the benefit of not discriminating whether it's period cramps, migraines, a broken leg, food poisoning, or depression.

EDIT: I'm German. Sick leave is completely separate from vacation days here and not limited (although you get less money after six weeks because your health insurance takes over from your employer). Generally I find that one of the only acceptable solution to the problem at hand. Giving half your employees extra days off is a bad idea, conflating vacation and sick leave is a bad idea, and forcing employees to come to work when they're unable to is a bad idea.

My thoughts exactly.

Now I'm wondering if you consider it sexist against men, who are denied this benefit. Or against women, who are (once again) stereotyped as weak and unreliable?

I guess the answer is "both". But I can't shake the feeling that this is actually much worse for women than it is for men.

In principle, I don't even have a problem with some groups getting a few more days off, or other special arrangements. Some countries have rules for minority religions, for example, allowing them to celebrate their respective holidays. But I can't really imagine any women thinking that this would be a good idea.