Bleeding on the job
The socialisation of women to endure period pain at the workplace
The world is disturbingly comfortable about women’s discomfort and pain during their periods at the workplace.
At many points in the recent past, debates have sparked off around period leave policies for employees. Just this year, in March, Shashi Tharoor tweeted the link to a petition for period leaves at the workplace, and in August, a few days back, Zomato introduced 10 days of period leave every year for all menstruating employees.
These have been regarded as welcome moves by many, while others remain divided on the issue.
Why can’t women just take a painkiller and come in to work? asked some. Nidhi Razdan has had a PCOS surgery and yet did not feel the need to take a leave every month. Barkha Dutt reported during Kargil on her period without requiring a leave.
I worry about how this comes across to male employers and policy-makers with the decision-making power to grant period leaves. If women can report from war-zones on their period, then surely they don’t require a period leave for their jobs? they might wonder. The harm that is done by such stances is tangible and real, so in this post I want to exclusively focus on addressing this here: Why do so many women think they need to put up with period pain at the workplace?
There are many possible answers one can offer to this. But as an employer or policy-maker, if you’re asking in good faith, if you really want to think through in detail why some women might hold such stances that seem so counter-productive to their own well-being, the most important response is this: Women are socialised to be uncomfortable and to endure pain most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort and pain.
Disclaimer: The fact that period leave policies and debates around them apply only to formal workplaces (while 94% of women are employed in the unorganised sector in India) certainly makes them “elite” conversations, but nonetheless, important ones for progress of feminist movements in the country. These conversations also extend to transgender and non-binary persons, however my own location as a cis-women precludes me from speaking on behalf of their experiences.
Let us begin with what we already know about women’s bodies and pain through scientific research, which is scarce.
Research shows that over 84% of women experience period pain (dysmenorrhoea). A medical study finds that “dysmenorrhea negatively affects women’s quality of life and is the leading cause of absence from school and work among women in the reproductive age.” Some doctors have described period pain to be “almost as bad as having a heart attack.” More specifically, among Indian women, prevalence of dysmenorrhea is over 70% with variations reported across regions. Period pain may also be caused by underlying medical conditions, the most common being endometriosis, which research shows affects 16% to 61% of women of reproductive age.
For a problem so common and widespread, the existing effective treatments are severely limited. The NHS website states: “there is no cure for endometriosis and it can be difficult to treat.” The symptoms of period pain can be dulled by taking painkillers, or hormone treatments such as contraceptive pills, which are known to cause side-effects. If such less invasive treatments offer no relief, a surgery is the last resort, but even that isn’t a complete cure, and the pain can persist.
This is in glaring contrast with the medical research and treatments that we have for male needs. A man can get a doctor’s prescription for Viagra based on a self-report, but it still takes a woman 9.28 years of suffering to be diagnosed with endometriosis. Researchers have conducted five times as many studies on erectile dysfunction as premenstrual syndrome (PMS) even though it is reported that 90 percent of women experience PMS symptoms as opposed to 19 percent of men suffering erectile dysfunction.
Referring to stereotypical representations of the egg and sperm drawn in scientific accounts of reproductive biology, Emily Martin, an anthropologist, writes that menstruation is viewed as a failure; “medical texts describe menstruation as the ‘debris’ of the uterine lining, the result of necrosis, or death of tissue… a system has gone awry, making products of no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap.” On the other hand, male reproductive physiology is evaluated quite differently; as Martin observes, “the ‘remarkable’ process of making sperm involves precisely what, in the medical view, menstruation does not: production of something deemed valuable.”
On the one hand, menstruation not being viewed as a “productive” process for men has resulted in a significant dearth of research into it. On the other hand, the medicalisation of female bodies, especially the “productive” processes relating to female reproduction that results in the continuation of male lineage through offsprings, have invited far greater scientific scrutiny. This medicalisation enables the burden of birth control to be placed on women. Today, almost all forms of contraceptives are developed exclusively for the female body.
We have no effective contraceptives for men till date because of the “lack of initiative of drug companies, inadequate funding of research, and the reluctance of males to use chemicals in their own bodies” according to a medical study. A recent paper reported that a trial for a male contraceptive injection was halted due to concerns regarding adverse side effects, specifically acne, and mood changes. So, basically, all the side effects that women already put up with when they take contraceptive pills. (I do too, so I’d know.)
This is how bad our science about women’s bodies, and more specifically, about women’s pain, has been. By refusing to see pain and discomfort as things women routinely endure on their periods, even our scientific studies end up being focused disproportionately on the “productive” parts of women’s lives that benefit men the most.
Once you’ve absorbed how horrifying it is that even medical science — the field that is entrusted with finding treatments for women’s pain — does not take women’s pain seriously, we might want to next consider how the responsibility for pain management then shifts onto women themselves.
Women are constantly trained out of noticing or responding to their bodily discomfort, in all spheres of life, and especially for the benefit of men. This is not limited to menstruation.
From a very young age, the biggest compliment society bestows upon girls is calling them beautiful, no matter how much they need to modify their own appearances to fit that label. Girls learn to derive much of their own pleasure from how others gain pleasure by looking at them. Women grow up to perform sexual attractiveness for men through high heels and uncomfortable, tight clothing designed to wrench their bodies while men seem appealing in perfectly comfortable clothes.
Be it in the role of sisters, mothers, or wives to men, women are taught to subordinate and sacrifice their own careers, interests, and much of what they themselves derive pleasure from in accordance to what is pleasurable for others, specifically men. Even if they need to endure discomfort or pain in the process. Childbirth is meant to be liberating for women, no matter how painful. Filling their children’s bellies with food is taught as a means of satiating their own hunger. Women fake orgasms because they’ve been taught to tolerate their own discomfort and find pleasure in their sexual partner’s pleasure.
When one gender has been taught their whole lives to derive pleasure from others, while silently enduring their own pain that comes with it, it’s not difficult to see why they would grow up to become poor judges of their own discomfort, which they have been taught to always ignore in the interests of others.
In a world where women are taught to value themselves and their bodies, one could reasonably expect that no woman would put up with her own menstrual discomfort.
That is not the world we live in.
In the world we live in, from a young age, women are socialised to tolerate abnormal pain as though it is normal. A “good girl” is one who grits her teeth and gets through pain. What we are taught since our first period cycle as young women about what to expect from menstruation is that it is going to hurt, and we have to be strong to get through it. With such an initiation into menstruation, young girls’ ability to recognise unnaturally severe period pain gets thwarted. When menstruation continues to hurt long after women grow up, at what point is one supposed to stop tolerating it and consult a doctor, especially when everyone says we’re supposed to keep putting up with it?
No wonder many women don’t even recognise that their period pain may be a health problem, and often believe it’s just something they need to “put up with”. I was myself diagnosed with PCOS at the age of 25, when I was finally prescribed contraceptive pills to manage the pain and frequency of my periods. I have had painful periods since puberty, but I never bothered to get a medical check-up until I missed my period for 3 months at a stretch.
Finally, let us see how the female socialisation of enduring pain and discomfort trickles down to the workplace.
Look at the double standards that apply to how women are supposed to behave to be considered “professional “at the workplace. Quoting directly from responses of a study that asked women the question, ‘How do you think your gender has affected your working life?’ — “When the women described their workplace experiences, there seemed to be a discrepancy between the behaviours that a man could demonstrate without negative consequence — and sometimes even exploit — and those seen as acceptable for women.” These included outspokenness, assertion, and anger as ways of behaving that seemed to be judged differently when coming from a man, while for women, they were construed as being frightening or aggressive. We have all experienced this, and it is not particularly comforting, is it?
In her book, “The Beauty Myth,” Naomi Wolf introduces the concept of a “professional beauty qualification” that is institutionalised as a condition for women’s hiring and promotion at the workplace. She outlines three myths that keep this requirement in place: (1) “Beauty” is defined as a legitimate and necessary qualification for a woman’s rise in power. (2) “Beauty” can be earned by any woman through hard work and enterprise, even if it comes at the cost of her ow discomfort. (3) The working woman has to think about “beauty” in a way that undermines the way she has begun to think as a result of the successes of the women’s movement. And what is considered beauty for women, as we have seen earlier, necessitates a certain degree of bodily discomfort. The effect of this is that the closer women come to power at the workplace, the more physical discomfort, self-consciousness, and sacrifice are asked of them.
The implied social bargain between women and men at the workplace is that one side will endure a great deal of discomfort for the other’s satisfaction. And we’ve all agreed to pretend like that’s normal, and just how the workplace functions.
We see women at work everyday working through discomfort and pain, and not saying a word. Women are supposed to perform professionalism and comfort that they do not even feel under workplace conditions that make being comfortable almost impossible. Women have to dress a certain way, talk a certain way, and behave a certain way, in accordance with what is considered “professional” conduct at the workplace, which is a set of rules that men designed when they designed the workplace. As a man, the next time you see a woman smiling through squeezed feet in high heels at work, know that you are witnessing a performance and that you have been trained to see that performance as daily routine.
Specific to menstruation, a study recently found that 32 per cent of male workers said they thought it was ‘unprofessional’ of women to talk about periods at work. Workplace comfort surveys don’t even mention “pain” or “menstruation.” Among the 20 parameters chosen for a study on “ease of doing work” for women in Delhi NCR, not a single of them refers to having to endure discomfort and pain.
This is not surprising because the workplace was designed by men, keeping in mind the interests of male employees. For a long time, women had to “fit in” at these workplaces or they would not be allowed inside the door. That is why older generations of women (like Barkha Dutt and Nidhi Razdan who oppose the period leave policy) still fear that women will lose employment opportunities if the period leave is instituted, as male employers may discriminate against women by simply not hiring them. While there have been cases that highlight the success of period leave policies in some parts of India, I can empathise with the fear of backlash discrimination against women. Their fears are not unfounded. But their solutions are misplaced.
The way to handle such backlash discrimination is through penal or civil action against an employer (by prohibiting it specifically in the terms of legislation), not by withholding valid, necessary demands for period leave.
Similar concerns were raised during public conversations around the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Women feared that mandating a sexual harassment policy at work would disincentivise male employers from hiring women for the fear that they may file harassment allegations. However, this legislation was passed because we recognise that no matter how male employers may respond, safety at the workplace is an undeniable right of all women. Similarly, healthcare is a right of all women, and period care is an important part of women’s healthcare that we must provide for with paid period leaves.
When you don’t make this provision, you continue to fail women. Since the beginning of history, women have ignored their bodies’ pain signals and powered through at masculine workplaces like endurance soldiers. They have worked in industries where their discomfort, pain, objectification, and violence has been taken lightly, normalised, and even exploited.
Meanwhile, the gender that refuses to use chemicals in their own bodies, the gender for whom contraceptive trials are stopped due to side-effects of mood changes, the gender that is considered appealing when comfortable, the gender around whose needs entire workplaces and societies are designed — that gender, is telling women they’re overreacting to period pain at work? Men are asking women to pop a painkiller and come in to work? Rich.
Period leave is not just about busting menstrual taboos, though that is an important part of it. Period leave is a way to fundamentally shift the way we view and value women’s bodies and comfort at the workplace. It is one of the ways to finally take women’s pain seriously.
So the next time you question why women put up with their own discomfort at the workplace, why they don’t join in unison to demand a period leave to attend to it, you might also want to question why as a society, we have not yet taken women’s pain seriously. And why we have outsourced this failure onto women, spending centuries teaching them to ignore their body’s discomfort and pain for which we still have no effective medical treatment.
A 10-min video explainer on why we need the period leave at workplaces in India:
