It sounds like an excuse a character from “Mad Men” would come up with to avoid hiring a woman: claiming she can’t do the work because she would need several days off each month due to her menstrual cycle.

Yet that is precisely what a company in Bristol, U.K., is doing. The organization, called Coexist, which manages event spaces, is planning to offer paid leave for women who are on their periods. The company, which employs 24 women and seven men, believes that giving women the paid time off for their periods doesn’t make a business unproductive, but allows women to “synchroniz[e] work with the natural cycles of the body,” according to Company Director Bex Baxter.

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