Decline in women's workforce participation amid debate on menstrual leave

This comes in light of a fall India has seen with regards to participation of women in the workforce – the numbers now compare to war torn countries like Yemen. The implementation of Maternity Benefit Act, allowing six-month paid leave, caused a net job loss for 13-18 lakh women in FY18-19 and 9.6-13.6 lakh in FY19-20, as per a Teamlease research.

While it may be a widely accepted argument that menstrual leave may impact productivity, this research done with more than 32,700 women indicates that only approximately 13.8 percent of women respondents availed menstrual leave option, of which only 3-4 percent took the leave repeatedly. Approximately 80 percent did not avail the option at all.

Diva Dhar from Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, said there are diverse menstrual leave policies adopted by countries and employers, but little evidence on benefits and drawbacks to women’s workforce participation and productivity and its applicability in the Indian context, where women work largely in the informal sector. "Leave policies such as maternity or parental leave policies can (but not always) promote women’s economic security, but there are large gaps in coverage – only 1 percent of women in India are covered by the maternity leave policy, for example," Dhar said.

While legislation is welcome, past experience shows that have limited impact in day to day lives.

Talking about the landmark decision in Vishakha & Ors. vs State of Rajasthan, the SC gave certain guidelines to mitigate the effect of the workplace sexual harassment. The guidelines for preventing and navigating in case of sexual harassment were given by the court in 1997. But until 2013, when the government implemented the Sexual Harassment Act, corporate houses did not adapt these measures fully.

In another instance, in 2018, member of parliament Shashi Tharoor proposed a bill on Women’s Reproductive and Menstrual Wellness to make some government authorities offer sanitary napkins for free, among other suggestions, but the bill was discouraged on accord for being an 'unclean' topic.

The court also discussed the fundamental right of equality. Article 14 of the Indian Constitution talks about equality. There is an intelligible differentia under Article 14 that says equality shall prevail amongst equals and amongst unequals. Meaning all equals shall be comparable to each other, and similarly all unequals shall be compared amongst themselves.

Men and women though equal in terms of cerebral equality, the same equality dissuades when spoken in terms of physicality. Menstruation is not a linear periodic cycle. While the phenomena of menstrual bleeding can be seen, there are multiple related evils like cramps, bloating, fatigue, headache, breast soreness, anxiety, stress and, in some cases, depression.

While taking a four-day leave might look like a sign of lethargy, for some women it is a real every month battle from an average age of 14-40 years.

"If the policy has been missing for such a long time, there is a legal responsibility to give mensuration its legitimate validity," said Anjali Chawla, an assistant professor at Jindal Global Law University, Haryana.

Does the menstrual impact productivity? We decided to ask a C-Suite executive at a tech company in India which has a menstrual leave policy. "None. As long as we are treating people like responsible adults… Do you think any other form of leave impacts productivity at work?" said the executive, requesting anonymity.

Across the world countries like Spain, Zambia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan have very friendly and flexible menstrual leave policies for women. Some Indian states also have legislations supporting menstrual leave policy and its implementation nationwide was a question raised in the SC hearing on the PIL on February 24, 2023.

"Bihar, Kerala, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh have made menstrual leave policies. When Bihar made its policy in 1992, it wasn’t considered as a welcome move, but various states followed. It is rightly suggested that for a pan-India implementation, we would need to consult stakeholders, and study the statistics from places where such policies have been already enforced. This can help us in coming up with a comprehensive framework that fits the interest of both women and the businesses," said Nikhil Naren, an author and assistant professor at Jindal Global Law School.

 

—The author, Aishwarya Nir, is a female entrepreneur, who founded and  actively involved in managing Global Beauty Secrets - a luxury beauty brand. She’s also a Director at Aishwarya Healthcare - a pharmaceutical company. The views expressed are personal.

Read her previous articles here