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.
“For women, one of these is their menstrual cycles. Naturally, when women are having their periods, they are in a winter state, when they need to regroup, keep warm and nourish their bodies,” Baxter told the Mirror. “The spring section of the cycle, immediately after a period, is a time when women are actually three times as productive as usual.”
Surely, informing other employers that women aren’t very productive when it’s that time of the month will be a major win for women’s equality and advancement in the workplace.
And yet article after article has been written praising this policy. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Women complain of unequal treatment from their male colleagues, that they face discrimination in the workplace and that they can do anything that men can do. This strikes me as an acknowledgement that we can’t.
This is just a private company, so it’s not a big deal. I certainly hope women don’t start demanding special treatment in the workplace because of a biological function they should have learned how to deal with in middle school. I get it, some women have bad cramps or bad PMS, but there are literally hundreds of ways to fix that. If any of the numerous over-the-counter drugs don’t work, there are home remedies. If none of those work, and you have period pains so severe you can’t work, then you should probably seek medical help.
The men, naturally, won’t be getting any time off for their easily treatable aches and pains. Even if you don’t mind the discrimination against men to give women this special treatment — allowing them to skip work a few days every month while the men pick up the slack — it would also be discriminating against menopausal women. (And what about trans women?)
Look, I’m clearly no social justice warrior, but some will feel discriminated against under a policy like this. No one advocating for this leave will care what men have to say (They inevitably come back with the old “if men had periods this kind of leave would already be a thing.”) Well, no, it wouldn’t. Men would probably be doing what women do now.
Coexist’s event on the policy necessarily aims to target every argument I have against this, by claiming it’s not about women getting special treatment but about creating “a positive approach to menstruation and the menstrual cycle that empowers women and men and supports the effectiveness and wellbeing of the organization.”
We already have a positive approach, and it’s called do your damn work and stop complaining. You’re at work to work, not complain about your aches and pains that you should be able to handle.
The woman discussing the policy at an upcoming event, Alexandra Pope, claims that “menstruation is seen as a liability or a problem.” It’s not if you keep working, but if you provide paid leave for women — and lawmakers catch wind of the idea, then it might become a liability.
We already have lawmakers trying to remove the sales tax from tampons, because women. (Also, the tax will be made up elsewhere, so women won’t really be saving money.) Women with health insurance already received birth control without a copay (paid for with higher premiums and deductibles) even though birth control was already cheap if you had insurance. Now women are supposed to get paid leave for cramps?
Because that won’t make employers think twice about hiring young women or anything.
Think about it. You have the option between a man who can work an entire month, and a woman who requires to be paid the same amount but for fewer days. How is that not going to cause problems for young women first entering the workplace?
Speaking of pay, women in the developed world also already complain about a wage gap that’s allegedly due to discrimination (it’s not). You think requiring extra paid leave because of this won’t depress wages? Again, activists can fall back on the Equal Pay Act (if they actually acknowledge it exists, they currently don’t appear able to), but companies would be able to prove a financial incentive to pay the woman less — she’s working fewer days.
How much more special treatment will women need before they are “equal”?
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
