Paid Menstrual Leave

Kuato2012 · 2022-05-12T13:08:47+00:00

Problem: smokers need 10-minute breaks throughout the day, which other workers don't need. But giving the break to one demographic and not the other is unfair.

Solution: give everyone 10-minute breaks throughout the day.

Problem: some women apparently need menstrual leave, which other workers don't need. But giving the break to one demographic and not the other is unfair.

Solution: somehow an equitable solution evades us.

AskingToFeminists · 2022-05-12T17:54:33+00:00

Feminists :

give only women special paid leaves from work

Employers :

employ more men, as it means more work for the same price

Feminists :

surprised Pikachu face

I was under the impression that this kind of things had already been tried, with paid maternity leaves, which had precisely resulted in an understandable hiring discrimination, which was precisely why paid paternity leaves or parental leaves were introduced. But I guess learning from experience is not for the fanatical.

MazerTag · 2022-05-12T07:00:04+00:00

There are so many problems with gendered leave policies, I don't think any sane person could support them.

What if you're trans? What if men want an extra few days off when they don't feel good (for any reason)? What if women abuse the system and use it as a long weekend generator? What if workplaces stop promoting women because they can't be trusted to show up when a big project is due, because they suddenly can't do anything when menstruating?

What about the old, who no longer menstruate? Are we going to monitor who does or does not menstruate? If a woman has a hysterectomy, does she lose this benefit? If a female athlete stops getting periods, is she required to report it?

Just give all workers an extra couple of days per month, if that's what they need to be 100%, and quit messing around with this discriminatory feminist bullshit!

peanutbutterjams · 2022-05-12T08:59:58+00:00

It's telling that the countries (SK and Italy excepted) that have a paid menstrual leave are also countries where far more people have a very traditional views of women as fragile creatures to be protected, exceptioned, and never ever treated as a full equal.

Because paid menstrual leave causes a defacto pay gap

Especially if it's unpaid but if it is that won't last long. Feminists will point to the mythic pay gap to force governments to pass a law ensuring menstruating days are paid.

Once a lie is accepted, there's no end to its abuse.

ExMuzzy · 2022-05-12T16:16:24+00:00

Wouldn't this make more likely for businesses, especially smaller businesses to not hire women? If we consider a month 4 weeks then a woman may be working 25 days a month and man 28 days a month. That's also ignoring the lack of or disparity in paternity leave.

lorarc · 2022-05-12T17:35:46+00:00

Okay, so let me tell you a story.

In my country it used to be quite popular (probably still is but there were changes recently that I'm not up to date with) that pregnant women would get a doctor's note that pregnancy is endangered and they can't work, often at the very start so that's 8 months of sick leave. Than 20 weeks of maternal leave, then 32 weeks of parental leave that can be split between parents but usually women take most of it. And then when the employee returns they have accumulated PTO and have to take holidays right away so that's 20/26 days per year so another 6-7 weeks the employee is off. In total 21-22 months during which the employer pays salary for the PTO and first month of sick leave and had to pay various insurance and taxes for the employee. And when they finally get back their old position has to be waiting for them because you can't fire someone for being pregnant so in smaller companies if you hired somoene as a replacment you have to let them go and instead have an employee that is out of date with everything.

The result? The smaller companies just wouldn't hire young women, other companies wouldn't offer normal full time work contracts and chose different contracts instead (and it used to be that those forms of work didn't get health insurance). Big corporations didn't care.

So young women who didn't have good education, knowledge and experience were discriminated against, probably they still are.

The menstrual leave would be the same. 3 additional days per month is something like if you hired someone who just works 1 friday in a month. Or someone who works 6 hours and a half instead of 8 hours every day. The result would be that smaller companies don't want to hire women, the companies that hire women will offer worse conditions and lower pay, if the leave is not mandatory there will be heavy pressure not to use it. Women will be viewed as having less experience when after 6 years of work they spent same time at work as a man who's been working for 5 years.

Even if there somehow was no discrimination and women would be paid the same for less days of work they still would have harder time at work as they would do less work every month and so would have lower results.

In the end it's a great idea if you want to promote the way of life where men have careers and women's work is seen as a hobby. It's great if you want young and talented women to have harder time on the job market.

NimishApte · 2022-05-12T08:11:38+00:00

My suggestion would be that simply give everyone 3 days of health leave every month. Although, I can understand giving women some preference, because as a general rule, women do have to bear periods of which there is no male equivalent. That's why I also support giving preference to men's health as men have a shorter life expectancy.

senove2900 · 2022-05-12T09:29:46+00:00

Italy (only proposed in Parliament in 2017)

Weird one. It was introduced by PD, the main center-left party, but never passed the committee stage. That by itself is not strange, most laws die there. What's strange is I'm finding interviews by the bill's own sponsor saying it needed changing. I don't think they ever intended to push it, I'm wondering if they didn't put it forward because of some deal with this or that org that required them to.

eldred2 · 2022-05-12T20:43:46+00:00

This would total 36 days, that is about 1 month and 1 week, per year.

36 days is 7 (work) weeks and one day.

WesterosiAssassin · 2022-05-12T21:01:33+00:00

Just mandate that everyone be given a few extra sick days each month and the problem goes away.

MRA_TitleIX · 2022-05-13T00:23:58+00:00

~13% of the total work days in a year can be take off with this. Yikes.

rattlesnake_suitcase · 2022-05-12T12:52:39+00:00

Where I work, we get 15 PTO (paid time off) days per year which includes all your vacation and/or sick days. After 10 full years of service (meaning you're starting day one of year 11), that benefit is finally increased to 20 days.

To think that a woman, solely by virtue of her gender, is now permitted 36 days/year for menstruation, in addition to their regular benefits, is absolutely insane to me.

LinkCandid6104 · 2022-05-12T09:21:42+00:00

It’s relevant for men because they complain about how men aren’t at home with family enough so how bout if u get three days off a month cool some women ACTUALLY REALLY NEED THAT pcos is a terrible period issue to have but EQUALITY means men should get the same thing three days off a month to take care of their partner paralyzed by period pains and immense amounts of blood orrrrrr to spend time with family EQUALITY goes both ways men dont get special exceptions at times EVEN WHEN THEY REALLY NEED IT FOR HEALTH ISSUES AS WELL

YesAmAThrowaway · 2022-05-12T12:14:37+00:00

How about instead of gendering this, we centre it around necessity? If you have your period affecting you to a point where working to a sufficient standard becomes inhumane, you should be able to get a free doctor's note, hand it to your employer and from there on be entitled to the monthly three days. Perhaps meet up with the OBGYN every 6 months adter forst starting it to assess whether you still need to continue having the extra days off (e.g. when during those days you don't feel better than when working or when working during that time would make periods worse again).

This way we could lay the foundation for a decent sick leave program, if that is not a thing yet, though I'd wager there is such a thing in Spain since it's an EU country with a highly capitalistic economy and better worker rights than e.g. the US.

MelissaMiranti · 2022-05-12T07:00:17+00:00

What about women who don't menstruate? Older women, women who use birth control to skip their period, trans women, and other women who don't for whatever reason, do they also get the off days?

smaran13 · 2022-05-12T09:18:29+00:00

Wow.. okay, when I first heard this I didn’t understand the repercussions of it but now I do. 3 days is too much, personally speaking. I have PCOS and yes I’ll admit, the periods are debilitatingly painful for the first two days along with other symptoms of nausea, diarrhoea, weakness etc.. but I don’t get them every month. Are these leaves compulsory or optional? And even in college when we had these provisions (single day period leave) most of us tried not to misuse it. But yeah, tbh there were a few times we misused them as an excuse to recover from a hangover or something.

But work environment is different because there’s more pressure, and money + functioning of the work-team is at stake. I’m worried that if this becomes the norm, companies are going to avoid hiring women and resentment will breed amongst already existing female employees and colleagues..

LakiL_ · 2022-05-13T13:44:44+00:00

Capitalism is smart, it adapts, even to feminism.

Reduce workload of everyone, so people don't spend 80% of their life working? nah.
Instead, let's please this vocal demographic and all is well.

Deadlocked02 · 2022-05-12T10:13:15+00:00

When I first saw this news on Facebook, there were a great deal of people, including women, who found it ludicrous. There were also many of them who thought it was fair.

The article says the package was announced by the The Secretary of State for Equality and against Gender Violence and Spain is known for being a country that leans heavily on the feminist side, so I think it’s fair to say that this is a subject that’s relevant and worth fighting for many of them, both institutional feminists and non-institutional ones.

In a way, I don’t think it’s wrong to say that the fight of feminism/women’s rights activists has been a fight against female biology itself. Men and women are not the same, and while the way societies organize themselves relied and still rely heavily on male biology to keep functioning, by providing, protecting, performing heavy and dangerous menial labor, which is the source of most male issues, male biology doesn’t bring a package of shortcomings itself, it’s the way that society benefits from it that does.

But a great deal of the efforts of feminists comes down to their nonconformity when it comes to the biological reality of women and its shortcomings and their desire to subvert biology or at least mitigate its downsides. Periods, pregnancy, the fact that women are, on average, weaker than men. These biological realities play a huge role in feminists discourse and its proposed policies to build a better world for women. And it doesn’t matter how much it’ll cost or who’s going to pay for it, it’s the only morally viable way.

I don’t think it’s a wrong ideology per se, but certainly a morally bankrupt one for its conflicting takes on biology. If you take issues like legal paternal surrender as an example, the overwhelming majority of people who believe women shouldn’t be hostages of their own biology will suddenly change to a discourse that’s completely antithetical to their usual one and say that (unlike women) men should accept their biological reality, that they don’t have the power to decide whether a woman keeps the baby or not, so if she decides to have a baby against his wishes and extract a considerable amount of his income per month in the form of child support, that’s completely fair (needless to say how this also enables plenty of rapists to extract child support from their victims).

The biological privileges of men and how useful they were and still are to keep society functioning are the cause of men’s social shortcomings. Meanwhile, the disenfranchisement that is often caused by female biology is the source of all the societal privileges that are granted to them as a way of mitigating their biological reality.

TitanicPat · 2022-05-13T21:56:57+00:00

When feminists assert a disadvantage, its all unquantifiable, calculation defying elements culminating nebulously in non disprovable inequality. And feminists have been skilled enough to find and track all of these elements

But when feminists propose a solution, their usual steps are - place thumb on scales, push.

We've all got to be vigilant against a 1001 invisible, unconscious ways that could victimise or oppress women. But when these policy makers want to just hand women an extra 3 weeks holidays a year, the reassurance is - "Nah! It'll be fine!"

probably3raccoons · 2022-05-12T21:32:42+00:00

I’m surprised this concern hasn’t been raised: I sure hope that legislation is trans-friendly and considers dudes with period cramps as well.

Also are you suggesting that women would just abuse the system and fuck off for a weekend each month just because they can? Why is this the assumption you’re jumping to? Conversely, anyone could just say they get monthly explosive diarrhea for a day or two off, but you don’t see that happening. Women aren’t going to start en masse calling in because of this. The majority of women who get cramps so bad they need time off for them already take those sick days, legislation or not.

DirtyBoyzzz · 2022-05-12T19:22:23+00:00

Holy shit guys aren’t we supposed to be PRO workers’ rights?!

Algoresball · 2022-05-18T17:27:27+00:00

So when a women hits menopause does she lose the leave? Would that mean she has to report her menopause status to her employer?

Birdietuesday · 2022-07-30T19:21:03+00:00

I don’t want my employer knowing my cycle.

Paid Menstrual Leave

Why is this relevant for men?

Comments

Title	Paid Menstrual Leave
Author	lightning_palm
Upvotes	132
Comments	84
Date	May 12, 2022 6:50 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/unuzlh/paid_menstrual_leave/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/paid-menstrual-leave.1114536 https://theredarchive.com/post/1114536