Why periods are everybody’s business - especially your boss’s
In a week when daily Covid-19 cases soared above 12,000 and war broke out in Eastern Europe, a small article about period discrimination in a Kiwi workplace may have escaped your notice. Understandable – pandemic and war, these are not trivial matters. But neither is the health (and dignity) of approximately half the population.
In a way, it’s a tricky story to tell – for legal reasons, there can be no names attached, and very little detail either. What we do know, goes like this.
In 2020, an office-based client services worker, Sarah*, took a day of sick leave due to a menstrual-related illness. We don’t know what the exact symptoms were that led to Sarah’s sick day, but period symptoms can include intense and painful cramping, migraine, body aches, fever, back pain – all of which will sound familiar to anyone, man or woman, who’s had the flu. Symptoms for those who have endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome or a list of other conditions can be more severe.
Sarah claims she was criticised by her manager for taking the sick leave day. Understanding her rights under Aotearoa New Zealand’s anti-discrimination laws, she laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC).
At that point, when a complaint has been laid, the HRC will help facilitate mediation between the parties if both agree to it (mediation is voluntary). If that’s not taken up for some reason or does not result in a resolution, the complaint can be taken to the Human Rights Tribunal.
As OHRP solicitor Nicole Browne told me, there are pretty stringent rules in place for this; the OHRP has a responsibility to make good use of public money, which means only the important cases make it through.
“We are unlikely to take a case that will lose unless there is a really strong public interest,’’ Browne says. She described Sarah’s case as ‘‘a really clear case of gender discrimination’’.
So, why was Sarah’s case so important? Let’s deal with the big picture first.
Periods are a common experience, yet rarely talked about. As one blogger put it in 2020: ‘‘Periods are a bodily function just like being hungry or thirsty. When you’re hungry, you eat. When you’re thirsty, you drink. When you get your period, you’re shamed.’’
The shame society places on periods applies to almost everything that comes out of a woman’s body – sweat, leaking breast milk, etc – but menstrual blood tops the list. I’d love to say I have confidently and openly marched up to a colleague and asked in a normal voice (instead of a furtive whisper) whether they have a spare tampon, but that would be a lie.
This is a nonsensical taboo, based on the belief – believed to have been first referenced in writing in the Latin Encyclopaedia in 73 AD – that bleeding (but only that kind of bleeding) is dirty and unhygienic. Which it is not. But consider how incredibly sticky that myth has been. Sticky to the point that only in very recent history has period poverty, and sick leave options, been talked about publicly at all. There are fathers and brothers and sons and boyfriends who will still feel too uncomfortable about buying tampons and pads for the women in their lives, as if a wrapped and boxed package on a supermarket shelf was, in itself, somehow dirty.
Not their fault. The patriarchal society’s fault. But bizarre.
We are beginning to tackle this stigma and its resulting effects. As of the middle of last year, schools could access free period products for their students through the Ministry of Education. The ministry’s website notes as of June 2021, 1619 schools and kura had joined the scheme, ‘‘meaning almost 90 percent of estimated students who have periods are in schools that have opted-in’’.
Workers in the sector I’ve spoken to say the scheme is working well, and will be keeping students in school who might otherwise be missing classes because there’s no money for pads or tampons.
There are many working women who wish their organisations would follow this lead, and some women-led workplaces do, but we can’t all work for female-run organisations.
Which leads to situations like Alisha Coleman’s, in 2017. Coleman, a 911 call-centre worker in the US, sued her employer under America’s Civil Rights Act after being sacked for leaking period blood at work.
Coleman, who was menopausal and experiencing heavy and unexpected periods, settled with her employer after the American Civil Liberties Union appealed a court ruling that she had not proved sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
It’s impossible to read Coleman’s case without picturing the distress she must have felt at the time. But Coleman nailed it in her statement after the case was settled.
‘‘I hope my speaking out will encourage other women who believe they have suffered discrimination in any form to come forward.’’
And so, back to Sarah, whose own settlement with her former employer is important for the same reason.
Women in the workplace may not experience a massive telling off, but a series of ‘‘microaggressions’’.
But it says to people like Sarah: ‘‘Your symptoms are not worthy of sick leave.’’ It’s ingrained sexism.
The idea of period leave (as opposed to ‘‘normal’’ sick leave) is still a divisive one. But organisations who have adopted it, in Australia and elsewhere, have described it as a ‘‘win-win’’ situation.
Workers feel more supported and productive, and importantly, they do not abuse the ‘‘privilege’’. The Victorian Women’s Trust’s 13 women employees, for example, took only eight days of period leave between them in the three years after the scheme was introduced at the trust in 2016. Women know when their symptoms make going to work a bad idea, and they should be trusted to make that call.
For people who get periods (and I include those who were born female but no longer identify as such), Sarah’s case is important because it calls out the belittling of women for things they can’t, biologically, control.
And it raises the flag for others in her situation, who might not know there is a way of fighting back.
For people who get periods, Sarah’s case is important because it calls out the belittling of women for things they can’t, biologically, control.
*Not her real name.