Are We Seriously Having A Conversation About Paid “Menstrual Leave”?

Last week, The Atlantic re-ignited a question so many of us are NOT thinking about — should paid ‘menstrual leave’ should be a thing?

Huffington Post quickly jumped on board during one of their HuffPost Live episodes, asking if paid “menstrual leave” is special treatment, or a necessary benefit?

According to Rebecca Watson from Skepchick.org, the premise is biased. She thinks, instead, that the question needs to be “should men get paid time off if they get kicked in the testicles?…What we’re talking about is just simple worker’s rights…” She continued by suggesting a worker should be given unlimited sick days, because they’d “take fewer, be happier and more productive.” A listener going by the name “gaydood” weighed in, saying he was in full support and Mikki Kendall, representing HoodFeminism.com, said that in her opinion, workers need more paid leave. She then she brought race into the discussion, saying women of color are more likely to have endometriosis and fibroids, and agreed with the first guest who suggested unlimited paid sick time for workers.

Paid “menstrual leave” is a thing in some countries. It’s been a thing in Japan since 1947, in South Korea since 2004 (and if they don’t take it, they are ensured extra pay), in Indonesia since 1948, was considered in the Philippines and Russia very recently, and is also the law in Taiwan.

It’s not often I agree with the ladies over at Slate, but I’m going to side with them on this one. In her article, “Thanks, But We Will Pass On Paid Menstrual Leave”, Katy Waldman does a great job explaining her take on things.

But if women really want to demystify their bodies in their places of employment, maybe they should just drag those menstruating bodies to work and give their colleagues the play-by-play. (“Hold that thought. Gotta change my tampon.”) Mostly, these policies reinforce bizarre ideas about female anatomy and fertility—like the notion that ladies “who don’t rest during their menses will have difficulty in childbirth later,” or that “the fairer sex” can’t function while their uterine lining sheds.

She continues, suggesting the argument that it compares to maternity leave is absurd.

While the first addresses a real need to care for a living person you have expelled from your body, and care for your own body out of which a living person was just expelled, the second recasts cramps and crankiness as mysterious ailments beyond the therapeutic powers of aspirin. One moment your boss is giving you days off to menstruate, the next he’s hiring a witch doctor to bless your uterus thrice upon the full moon. (Also, here’s a cool piece about the convergence of menstrual panic, misogyny, and Halloween fun in the female werewolf legend.)

She finishes with a plea to employers to just add a few products in the ladies room, be fair about the time off and to just forget about the whole paid menstrual leave thingy.

Therefore, I present my plea to employers. Give us tampons in our bathrooms! Give us Midol in our medicine cabinets! (I just checked Slate’s office stash: There is, nestled among Band-Aids and cough drops, a box of something called Pain-Aid premenstrual formula, which looks approximately 100 years old. But we do have communal cashews.) Give us plenty of paid sick leave for those days when we “are hunkered down under four blankets in soul-crushing pain,” as one of my colleagues puts it. Sometimes, some of us will need to sequester ourselves in lady caves of chocolate and cool washcloths and mumble to ourselves in an ancient tongue only she-dolphins can understand. But don’t offer us paid period leave. We’ll just spend it all taking self-pitying BuzzFeed quizzes.

And I agree.

Ladies, come on. We cannot have it both ways. We’re making ourselves look ridiculous even having this stupid discussion. Do you want to be treated equally, or do you not? Like one of my Facebook friends put it, with a law like this, “equal pay” would become “privileged pay because I’m a woman” and the hypocrisy here is making us look terribly foolish.

Enough already.

Question: what’s your take? Should paid ‘menstrual leave’ be a thing?

Image courtesy of Woman’s Day.