On January 19, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced that the Kerala government will extend menstrual leaves in all state universities. Naturally, the move came with its fair share of critics and opened up space for an important public discussion.
One of the major criticisms the policy faces is that it is tone-deaf to its context. What works for Western societies may not work for India — and why should it? We need home-grown policies that will fit the social demands made of menstruators in India. The fear is that with the topic already being taboo, the introduction of such policies will create grounds for further discrimination and denial of opportunities to menstruators — often women, and almost always perceived to be women.
To that, I have one question: When has a policy geared towards affirmative action, intended at equity, ever been received well? More importantly, is that a reason to deny the beneficiaries all that they stand to gain from it? The fact is that we live in a patriarchal world, and India is a traditional society. Consider maternity leave: Despite the leave being part of professional spaces in India since 1961, to this day, pregnancies or potential pregnancies are wielded against women and other pregnant people to deny them promotions and to argue that they are not fit for professional spaces. Instead of assuming that India is not ready for this conversation, why can’t we use a policy-based approach to initiate sensitisation that is long overdue? Why is it the menstruators’ burden to wait for society to catch up?
The response to social pushback against these policies should not be to roll them back once introduced. Instead, it should be taken as an opportunity to aid the policy with other projects — running sensitisation drives, addressing period poverty, and other similar state interventions. Any change is bound to be challenged in a democracy — that is no reason to not tackle the challenge.
The question must not be, “When will India be ready?” It must be, “What can we do to make India ready?”
Menstruation has long been shunned into dark corners of private spaces and this is not unique to India. Menstruators the world over, including in the West, still face stigma. Issues like period poverty, and malnutrition lack of medical access contribute to creating a menstruating population with acute health conditions. In a country like India, where a significant number of menstruators suffer from PCOS (a condition that causes extreme period pain, irregular periods, infertility etc), having a workplace policy that accommodates menstruation should be the bare minimum. PCOS, endometriosis, and irregular periods affect millions. Why would these medical conditions not be accounted for in a workspace when all others are?
Another argument is that periods are part of the normal rhythm of life for anyone who experiences them. By formalising its existence in professional spaces, we would be medicalising the experience. But menstruation is a biological process at the end of the day. Period pain is not “regular”. At least, not for many who experience it. The amount of pain experienced by different people is different, and so is the tolerance threshold. By making this a conversation that assumes that pain is tolerable for all, we alienate a big chunk of menstruators at the outset. A policy is supposed to, by design, be all-inclusive. Exceptions always exist but claiming that all menstruators, unless diagnosed with a condition, experience “tolerable” pain is an inaccurate assertion.
The larger issue here is that workspaces today, like much else, are made for men. Offices and other formal spaces are designed assuming the average worker is male. At the end of the day, integration, not accommodation should be the goal. Inserting these policies in public spaces inherently hostile to women and gender minorities is only one part of the solution. We need to restructure spaces, both professional and private, and reimagine public discourse to even the playing field. In a country where most office and school spaces don’t have period necessities like sanitary napkins (SN), where SNs are covered in three layers of black plastic, where we refuse to say the word “period” out loud, this change is ways away. A menstrual leave policy may be a good starting point to normalising these conversations and pushing for further change.
Author’s note: In this article, the word “women” has not been used to refer to those who menstruate. This is because many people who menstruate do not identify as women, namely, non-binary people, transmen, and others outside the gender binary. For this reason, the article refers to people who experience periods as “menstruators”.
sukhmani.malik@expressindia.com
