| Not sure how to feel about this; but I also don't consider myself a women who suffers heavily under period symptoms. If I feel bad enough that I can't do my work properly, I would simply leave, periods or not. (Normal paid sick leave - this is relatively easy in my country.) It has only happened once since I started working full time five years ago, that I was in so much pain from periods that I had to leave work. (And that was after taking two painkillers and even those didn't help.) I certainly think a policy like this would feed into wage gap issues - it would definitely be unfair to pay the same amount of money to two employees, when one of them potentially works 12 days more in a year. It sounds plausible that it would work better in a female dominated company -- I would rather suck up the pain than deal with stupid remarks of my male colleagues because they know I'm on my periods... In general, I think women grow up with having to deal with their periods and the symptoms since childhood/teenage years, so it's just a normal part of life for us. Sure, some women have it way worse that others, but I'd say 90% can cope with it without problems and don't need extra holidays. Though I do like the idea of giving those women in bad pain the opportunity to work from home! It doesn't necessarily help with the symptoms, but at least one can sit somewhere comfortable in PJs with a warm water bottle, which makes it a lot more bearable IMO. |