The context: food delivery service Zomato introduced up to 10 days of “period leave” a year for its women employees. The reaction: well, a...
The context: food delivery service Zomato introduced up to 10 days of “period leave” a year for its women employees.
The reaction: well, apart from the expected misogynistic (women will take advantage of this to slack off from work) and too-clever-by-half (one asked on Twitter, what about “painful erection leave” for men) responses of a few men, a big backlash came from women themselves.
From older women, women who have had to work hard through largely male workplaces and establish space for themselves and those who came after them. In the early days of women in the workplace, you had to be tougher than the men to get ahead. You could not show signs of weakness because if you did, you were immediately put down and put back in that place for the “weaker sex”. The Women’s Movement at the time was for equality, hard fought and hard won, whatever little bit was won.
A furtive exercise
I started working 36 years ago. In those days, no one discussed menstruation publicly at all. Women who could get a man to do it for them, would not even go to a shop to buy sanitary napkins. My mother was shocked when I told her that I bought them myself...
